Latest / DISGRACELAND / John Lennon: Violence, Protests, Provoking the FBI, and Pissing off the President

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John Lennon: Violence, Protests, Provoking the FBI, and Pissing off the President · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
0:17
Speaker 1: John Lennon and his foray into politics are insane. The
0:21
Speaker 1: one time Lovable Beadle aligned himself with violent revolutionaries, was
0:26
Speaker 1: suspected of conspiring to disrupt a national political convention, freed
0:31
Speaker 1: and unjustly jailed, doped, was alleged to have contributed financially
0:35
Speaker 1: to a paramilitary terrorist organization, and he survived a home
0:39
Speaker 1: invasion that eerily forecast his own shooting. John Lennon's turn
0:43
Speaker 1: as rock's most famous revolutionary was short lived. The highest
0:47
Speaker 1: levels of the United States federal government worried about the
0:50
Speaker 1: pop star's influence on American youth and combat at as
0:54
Speaker 1: radical politics by attempting to deport the ex Beadle. But
0:58
Speaker 1: before these events, John Lennon, of course made great music.
1:03
Speaker 1: Unlike that music I played for you at the top
1:05
Speaker 1: of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a
1:08
Speaker 1: preset loop from my melotron called Portly Prowler MK one.
1:14
Speaker 1: I played you that loop because I can't afford the
1:16
Speaker 1: rights to Family Affair by Sly and the Family Stone,
1:20
Speaker 1: And why would I play you that specific slice of
1:23
Speaker 1: riot going on cheese? Could I afford it because that
1:27
Speaker 1: was the number one song in America. On December tenth,
1:31
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, and that was the day John Lennon
1:34
Speaker 1: took the stage with known radical Jerry Rubin in front
1:37
Speaker 1: of thousands of fans in Detroit, drawing the wrath of
1:41
Speaker 1: none other than Richard Nixon, the President of the United States.
1:46
Speaker 2: On this episode.
1:47
Speaker 1: Radical Politics, violent Revolutionaries, a home invasion, a riot going
1:52
Speaker 1: on in John Lennon, I'm Jake Brennan, and this this
1:58
Speaker 1: disgraceland freaks as far as the eye could see, freaks.
2:31
Speaker 1: They filled Pontiac Stadium, fifteen thousand strong bombers and balladeers, radicals,
2:37
Speaker 1: all Detroit, Michigan, nineteen seventy one. Richard Nixon's silent majority
2:42
Speaker 1: was retreating. The freaks were ascended. Turns out violence worked.
2:47
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Junior was wrong. Nonviolence was submissive. You
2:51
Speaker 1: want change? Post a panther up outside a police station
2:55
Speaker 1: with a couple live rounds ready aim revolution. Jerry Rubin's
3:04
Speaker 1: Yippies had grown up from street theater grouto Marxist to
3:07
Speaker 1: guerrilla warriors. Detroit in nineteen seventy one wasn't like Chicago
3:12
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight. The Democratic National Convention was a
3:15
Speaker 1: coming out party for Jerry Rubin and his fellow revolutionaries,
3:19
Speaker 1: the New Left. Hello, America, do you know who your
3:22
Speaker 1: children are? Fifteen hundred rioting in the street. Mox Zi
3:25
Speaker 1: Guiles mockery trial, not guilty for incitement, guilty of contempt,
3:29
Speaker 1: three years overturned on appeal.
3:32
Speaker 2: Jerry Rubin beat the system and too.
3:35
Speaker 1: John Lennon that meant something, which is why he and
3:38
Speaker 1: his wife Yoko Ono were in Detroit that night to
3:41
Speaker 1: free Jerry Rubin's buddy John Sinclair. Sinclair, the sort of poet,
3:46
Speaker 1: half assed manager of the MC five and founding member
3:48
Speaker 1: of the White Panther Party, the anti racist brothers in
3:51
Speaker 1: arms to Bobby Seal's Black Panthers, had been railroaded. At
3:55
Speaker 1: least that was the revolutionary rap. Busted for dope, two joints,
4:00
Speaker 1: Sinclair was given a ten year sentence. Ten for two
4:04
Speaker 1: went the sloganeering. John Lennon cooked up the catchphrase himself,
4:08
Speaker 1: ten years, two joints harsh right. I guess what Jerry
4:12
Speaker 1: Rubin and John Lennon left out of the rhetoric was
4:14
Speaker 1: that Saint Clair, prior to the bus that sent him
4:16
Speaker 1: away for a decade, had already been busted numerous times
4:19
Speaker 1: for his flagrant refusal to stop smoking pot in public
4:22
Speaker 1: while on probation for previous dope arrests. Say what you
4:26
Speaker 1: will about the legality of marijuana, but stupid as stupid
4:30
Speaker 1: didn't matter. John Sinclair, Jerry Ruben, Bobby Seal. The tide
4:33
Speaker 1: was turning in their favor, at least in Detroit. Despite
4:37
Speaker 1: the arrest of a couple white Panthers for the bombing
4:39
Speaker 1: of a Selective Service office, despite the conviction of two
4:42
Speaker 1: black Panthers for the murder and torture of an informant
4:45
Speaker 1: alleged to have been committed on orders from Bobby Seal,
4:47
Speaker 1: and despite the violence encoded in Jerry Ruben's early seventies rhetoric.
4:51
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy one, the revolutionaries were gaining ground in
4:55
Speaker 1: the mainstream in Detroit. They flipped the City Council and
4:58
Speaker 1: won control of the city's legally constituted government. It was
5:02
Speaker 1: the coup of all coups for Jerry Rubin, who is
5:04
Speaker 1: now officially America's most effective revolutionary. Detroit City Council SAT
5:09
Speaker 1: members directly aligned with Reuben's radical New left causes, so
5:13
Speaker 1: as far as John Lennon was concerned, he was aligning
5:16
Speaker 1: himself for the winner. No matter what the audience in
5:19
Speaker 1: Potiac Stadium looked like on that night, the imagined counter
5:25
Speaker 1: culture utopia was in reality a stone fairweather fan opportunistic dystopia.
5:31
Speaker 1: College kids ripped on acid, tuck and Johnson Clare blues,
5:35
Speaker 1: Predatory drug dealers roaming the aisles, relieving suburban wastetoids of
5:38
Speaker 1: their allowances, breaking off bricks of hash and bag bowls
5:42
Speaker 1: of but motorheads, crushing cold cans of hams in old style,
5:46
Speaker 1: cruised for school night, trim Vietnam vettes home from a
5:49
Speaker 1: war they didn't want to wage in a country they
5:51
Speaker 1: didn't recognize, hooked on heroin, a drug they didn't understand,
5:54
Speaker 1: nodding out in the cheap seats, all of them forced
5:57
Speaker 1: to sit through half assed hippie concert planning, long drawn
6:01
Speaker 1: out breaks between musical artists, a stellar undercart to John
6:04
Speaker 1: and Yoko's headlining slot, consisting with Stevie Wonder, Bob Seeker,
6:08
Speaker 1: phil Oaks and Archie Shepp, and bored to tears by
6:11
Speaker 1: the long winded speeches and political ramblings of Reuben and
6:14
Speaker 1: the Zilk. Bobby Seal delivered, though Bobby knew that when
6:18
Speaker 1: it came to speeches, you needed to hit him where
6:20
Speaker 1: they lived with rock and roll soul power. He spit
6:24
Speaker 1: Cassius Clay melodies over v I Lenin chords, entertaining and
6:28
Speaker 1: motivating and as such, subversive as fuck. And by the
6:35
Speaker 1: time John and Yoko took the stage, self contained on
6:38
Speaker 1: methadone and cocaine cocktails, it was past two am. John
6:42
Speaker 1: Sinclair was sleeping in his cell. Many in the crowd,
6:45
Speaker 1: no doubt envious of him by this point, yet the.
6:48
Speaker 2: Band played on showtime.
6:52
Speaker 1: John Lennon Beatle John in the flesh in a rare
6:56
Speaker 1: concert performance was worth the price of admission, Worth the
6:59
Speaker 1: way wait, worth the coming hangover, worth the flashbacks, and
7:03
Speaker 1: well worth of political gobblybook being shouted to the rafters.
7:06
Speaker 1: It was even worth enduring John's wife on stage with
7:09
Speaker 1: his spine piercing singing style, a real life beatle, except
7:13
Speaker 1: John Lennon wasn't a beetle anymore. He was a revolutionary.
7:17
Speaker 1: He'd taken up arms for the cause, whatever that actually.
7:21
Speaker 2: Was in his mind.
7:22
Speaker 1: He was fighting a good fight, and he and his
7:24
Speaker 1: new brothers and sisters were winning. John Lennon didn't bet
7:28
Speaker 1: on losing horses. He learned his lesson with that ass
7:30
Speaker 1: grabbing Maishi a few years earlier. False prophets, didn't play
7:35
Speaker 1: pop starred and was overrated. He'd been there, He'd done that.
7:38
Speaker 1: Wanted to get him a mansion in the woods west
7:41
Speaker 1: of London, a tax bill larger than the GDP of
7:43
Speaker 1: a small nation, money he couldn't spend fast enough. Guilt
7:47
Speaker 1: over his success, alienation, apathy. This the cause, Reuben, Bobby Shore,
7:52
Speaker 1: even Saint Clair and his two joints. This was the
7:54
Speaker 1: next big thing. John was certain. More than primal scream therapy,
7:59
Speaker 1: more than LSD, more than chasing birds across America through
8:02
Speaker 1: a haze of amphetamines in Zimmerman's grass. Now was the
8:05
Speaker 1: time for real change. John could taste it. The future
8:08
Speaker 1: was blinding, which made the past invisible, which was the point.
8:12
Speaker 1: John Lennon wasn't the only one with his sights on
8:14
Speaker 1: the future. In the crowd that night, a handful of
8:21
Speaker 1: square white men circling their gaze upon the stage through
8:24
Speaker 1: government issued binoculars.
8:26
Speaker 2: If the crowd wasn't.
8:27
Speaker 1: So stoned, they would have made the men instantly by
8:29
Speaker 1: their white socks, dark shoes, floods, and high and tight
8:32
Speaker 1: haircuts squares Hoover's men, government men FBI, thereon orders from
8:38
Speaker 1: Bob Haldeman himself, Nixon's chief of staff and head ballbuster.
8:42
Speaker 1: John Lennon wasn't some ordinary junkie folk singer. He was
8:46
Speaker 1: a beetle and one, if not the biggest pop stars
8:49
Speaker 1: on the planet. But when it came to the youth,
8:52
Speaker 1: a demographic that Richard Nixon had little sway with, John
8:55
Speaker 1: Lennon's influence was immeasurable. Therefore, John Lennon's political motivation was
9:01
Speaker 1: highly suspect.
9:02
Speaker 2: What was he doing exactly? What was his angle?
9:06
Speaker 1: He wasn't even American. He was English, a foreigner on
9:09
Speaker 1: a visitor visa, granted entry under American soil into this
9:12
Speaker 1: great country by the generosity of the federal government alone,
9:15
Speaker 1: and here he was protesting that same government alongside known
9:19
Speaker 1: violent revolutionaries. If John Lennon would go to this extreme publicly,
9:24
Speaker 1: what could he possibly be up to in private? It
9:49
Speaker 1: was worse than Nixon stooges could have imagined. After John
9:52
Speaker 1: Lennon appeared at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally, Unbelievably, John
9:57
Speaker 1: Sinclair was freed.
9:59
Speaker 2: It worked. John Lennon was.
10:03
Speaker 1: Just as surprised as Richard Nixon. John Sinclair was released
10:06
Speaker 1: from jail to appeal his conviction on orders from the
10:09
Speaker 1: Michigan Supreme Court on the Monday after the freedom rally.
10:13
Speaker 1: John Lennon's public appeal, along with the leftists now ensconced
10:16
Speaker 1: inside city and state government, had come together.
10:19
Speaker 2: To win freedom for Sinclair.
10:22
Speaker 1: But it was more than a win for a lowly pothead,
10:24
Speaker 1: harshly convicted for smoking a weed that did little more
10:27
Speaker 1: than make him lazy and uninteresting. It was a symbolic
10:30
Speaker 1: win for the revolution, and it emboldened John Lennon. He
10:34
Speaker 1: doubled down on his political activities, appearing at the appalled
10:38
Speaker 1: Theater benefit for the Harlem Six as well as at
10:40
Speaker 1: another benefit for Attica State victims.
10:43
Speaker 2: He marched in the streets of.
10:44
Speaker 1: New York for the IRA and publicly eskewed his British
10:47
Speaker 1: Welsh heritage in favor of his Irish roots to better
10:50
Speaker 1: identify with the imperialized people of his Queen's England, and
10:54
Speaker 1: he marched Bobby Seal and Jerry Rubin out in front
10:57
Speaker 1: of a nationally televised audience on the Mike Douglas Show,
11:01
Speaker 1: publicly proclaiming his support of the Black Panthers anti nationalism,
11:05
Speaker 1: nodding along an agreement to Seal's stated goal of using
11:09
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers organized philosophy of intercommunalism to redistribute American wealth.
11:15
Speaker 1: The irony John Lennon, one of the richest musicians in
11:18
Speaker 1: the world and a white man sitting next to Bobby
11:21
Speaker 1: Seal in support of wealth distribution, A man whose primary
11:25
Speaker 1: business venture, Apple Core, existed for the main purpose of
11:28
Speaker 1: sheltering his multi million dollar income from tax collectors, taxes
11:33
Speaker 1: that would have paid for government social services for the
11:36
Speaker 1: underprivileged back home in his country had.
11:38
Speaker 2: He actually paid them.
11:40
Speaker 1: And of course here in America, John Lennon paid no
11:43
Speaker 1: taxes either. Yet here he was, as far as Nixon
11:45
Speaker 1: was concerned, blasting his anti American message out over American
11:49
Speaker 1: broadcast towers built with real American labor, performed by hard
11:53
Speaker 1: working Americans.
11:53
Speaker 2: Who actually did pay their taxes.
11:56
Speaker 1: The hypocrisy at all was enough to spend Richard Nixon
11:59
Speaker 1: into a late night Scotch fueled rant in the White House.
12:02
Speaker 1: Something had to be done. John Lennon was paranoid by nature,
12:09
Speaker 1: but this was something else. The clicks he heard.
12:12
Speaker 2: When he picked up the phone.
12:14
Speaker 1: Someone was listening, and the squares on the park benches,
12:18
Speaker 1: their legs crossed, their white sox showing their bespectacled heads
12:21
Speaker 1: peering over the sports page of the Daily News. Someone
12:25
Speaker 1: was watching the men he saw on inconspicuous sedans traveling
12:28
Speaker 1: a safe two cars back from whatever New York cab
12:31
Speaker 1: he was riding in. Someone was following him.
12:36
Speaker 2: A change of scenery was needed.
12:38
Speaker 1: Something less conspicuous than the five star aristocratic digs at
12:42
Speaker 1: the Saint Regis Hotel would no longer do so he
12:45
Speaker 1: rented a small apartment in the West Village. After all,
12:48
Speaker 1: revolutions never come from the top down. They come from
12:51
Speaker 1: the bottom, which is where John and Yoko seemed to
12:54
Speaker 1: be racing toward. No sooner did they arrive at their
12:57
Speaker 1: modest new digs at one five five and a half
13:00
Speaker 1: Bank Street, did they renounce their possessions.
13:03
Speaker 2: John wanted to give up his.
13:04
Speaker 1: Quote unquote possessions complex, perhaps sensing the hypocrisy of supporting
13:09
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers call for wealth redistribution while living off
13:12
Speaker 1: of his and his former bandmates tax sheltered rock star
13:15
Speaker 1: largazz Jerry Rubins spread the word John and Yoko had
13:20
Speaker 1: opened their checkbook at their new Bank Street apartment. They
13:25
Speaker 1: received the great Unwashed Freak community. All were invited to
13:29
Speaker 1: reveal their cause or their plight and be granted an
13:31
Speaker 1: audience with the new king and Queen of the counterculture,
13:34
Speaker 1: John and Yoko, who took their meetings as was their
13:37
Speaker 1: famous custom, in bed, often naked, ex cons down on
13:41
Speaker 1: their luck, librarians, black panthers, white panthers, Jerry Rubin's next
13:44
Speaker 1: generation of campus warriors, the newly christened Zippies. Any and
13:48
Speaker 1: all hard luck cases down with the cause came palms up,
13:51
Speaker 1: and John and Yoko did not disappoint. They put their money,
13:55
Speaker 1: or John's money, part.
13:56
Speaker 2: Of it anyway.
13:57
Speaker 1: Where their mouths were, John identified with all of them
14:05
Speaker 1: in private. As political rhetoric took a darker turn, became
14:08
Speaker 1: more violent, even to the point of shocking Jerry Rubin,
14:11
Speaker 1: who later said that John used to joke about his
14:13
Speaker 1: pacifist past and blame it all on Yoko. According to Ruben,
14:17
Speaker 1: Lennon said she's the one who's into the peace and love.
14:20
Speaker 1: John was pissed, particularly at the cops. Revolutionary violence was
14:25
Speaker 1: becoming an obsession, and they were all out to keep
14:28
Speaker 1: the common man down. The cops, the politicians didn't matter.
14:31
Speaker 1: It was the same as it was back at school.
14:33
Speaker 1: Do this, don't do that. The man stopped the spirit
14:36
Speaker 1: right out of you, wore you down to a nub,
14:38
Speaker 1: molded you into the soulis automaton that the lower class
14:41
Speaker 1: you were born into demanded and God forbid. You were
14:44
Speaker 1: born in the wrong part of the world, in Burma
14:46
Speaker 1: or Vietnam or Ireland, and then you.
14:48
Speaker 2: Were royally fucked.
14:50
Speaker 1: Whatever the means, As long as the people were free,
14:52
Speaker 1: free from their oppressors, as long as John was free,
14:55
Speaker 1: free from his past, Jerry Rubin was right, fuck them all.
15:00
Speaker 2: Bobby seeal cinched it via brother Malcolm. By any means.
15:03
Speaker 1: Necessary, John could get with that, and he was in
15:06
Speaker 1: a position to do so, which is why when an
15:12
Speaker 1: Irish arms dealer turned up at his door looking for
15:14
Speaker 1: a place to lay off his stash, John allegedly put
15:17
Speaker 1: him in touch with a contact who connected the arms
15:20
Speaker 1: dealer with the IRA Front nor then Irish Aid, an
15:23
Speaker 1: organization to which John Lennon would eventually assign the royalties
15:26
Speaker 1: for his song look of the Irish. The Front funded
15:29
Speaker 1: the Provisional IRA, the paramilitary division known as one of
15:33
Speaker 1: the most vicious, violent domestic terrorist organizations on the planet,
15:37
Speaker 1: which is why Lenin's biographer alleged that the Smart Beetle
15:40
Speaker 1: gave Jerry Rubin Zippies two brand in cash to finance
15:44
Speaker 1: the violent disruption of the Democratic and Republican conventions in
15:47
Speaker 1: Miami that year. The exact same type of violent crime
15:51
Speaker 1: Jerry Rubin in the Chicago seven cooked up at the
15:53
Speaker 1: Democratic National Convention back in nineteen sixty eight, but Miami
15:58
Speaker 1: in seventy two was to be even bigger, batter, more spectacle,
16:02
Speaker 1: more violence guaranteed. Violence is what really got the press's attention.
16:07
Speaker 1: Violence is what brought the revolution into Middle America's living rooms.
16:11
Speaker 1: Violence is what brought legitimate change Miami seventy two, Nixon's
16:16
Speaker 1: newest coronation. Jerry Rubin and John Lennon had big plans,
16:21
Speaker 1: but then there came a hard knock on the door.
16:24
Speaker 2: John opened it.
16:25
Speaker 1: Two squares, dark suits, white sox ins men Immigration and
16:30
Speaker 1: Naturalization Service. They handed John papers. The pros was bleak
16:35
Speaker 1: and bold faced courier font Mister John Lennon your deportation
16:39
Speaker 1: from the United States is hereby demanded.
16:48
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after this word word word.
16:56
Speaker 1: This was exactly what the White House feared thousands of
17:00
Speaker 1: protesters making their way from all over the country to
17:03
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy two Republican National Convention in Miami. It's
17:07
Speaker 1: why they were trying to toss John Lennon out of
17:09
Speaker 1: the country to port him. His case dragged on, and
17:12
Speaker 1: that was fine with authorities. In court or out of
17:14
Speaker 1: the country. It didn't matter either way. John Lennon was neutered,
17:18
Speaker 1: which was what the FEDS wanted.
17:21
Speaker 2: Where it was.
17:21
Speaker 1: John Lennon and Jerry Rubin, the rabble rouser who had
17:24
Speaker 1: so successfully disrupted the Democratic National Convention in nineteen sixty
17:28
Speaker 1: eight and gotten away with it, were planning on hosting
17:31
Speaker 1: a counter convention to be held outside the RNC Stale Affair,
17:35
Speaker 1: attracting all the freaks Vietnam War protesters, black panthers, white panthers, hippies, yippies, zippies,
17:41
Speaker 1: and whatever other revolutionary rabble could find its way down
17:44
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the country that couldn't happen. A
17:48
Speaker 1: counter convention would be a disaster for Dixon, just as
17:52
Speaker 1: he took the stage to make his case. For four
17:54
Speaker 1: more years, the lens of the press would be equally
17:56
Speaker 1: trained on the side show across the street, protesting only
18:00
Speaker 1: Nixon's presidency, but demonstrating in support of the charges that
18:03
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon was nothing more than.
18:05
Speaker 2: A war criminal.
18:07
Speaker 1: John Lennon Jerry Rubin. Any success in Miami for the
18:10
Speaker 1: two of them meant failure for Nixon. It was zero sum.
18:14
Speaker 1: So the federal hounds were unleashed, unto John Lennon in
18:17
Speaker 1: the form of a trumped up deportation case. What did
18:20
Speaker 1: John Lennon expect? Did he really expect to go up
18:23
Speaker 1: against the President of the United States and his goons
18:26
Speaker 1: Bob Haldeman and g. Gordon Lyddy with questionable immigrant status,
18:30
Speaker 1: a convicted doper a, known junkie. Did he expect to
18:33
Speaker 1: call Nixon in the establishment out on a repeated basis
18:37
Speaker 1: in public and to fund black panthers, white panthers IRA
18:40
Speaker 1: fronts and still be allowed to stay in this country
18:43
Speaker 1: and continue to do so. Say what you will about
18:46
Speaker 1: the righteousness of John Lennon's actions, but his hubris was monumental.
18:51
Speaker 1: The fact that the aggressive move by the Fed surprised him.
18:54
Speaker 1: Speaks to just how far he had his head.
18:56
Speaker 2: Up his own ass.
18:57
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy two, the federal government's gambit did what
19:01
Speaker 1: it was supposed to do, tied John up in court,
19:04
Speaker 1: effectively sidelining him from the revolution. He wouldn't dare fuck
19:08
Speaker 1: with Nixon in Miami while on trial over his status
19:11
Speaker 1: as a legal immigrant. Except it didn't matter whether without
19:15
Speaker 1: John Lennon the revolution was on Jerry Rubin was determined.
19:20
Speaker 1: Whether or not an actual counter political convention would still
19:22
Speaker 1: take place remained to be seen. That required planning, even
19:26
Speaker 1: if you were just going to nominate a real, live
19:27
Speaker 1: pig to run against Richard Nixon, which was the rumor,
19:30
Speaker 1: and planning was in a strong suit of the cause
19:33
Speaker 1: regardless though the revolution had arrived in Miami and shit
19:37
Speaker 1: was about to go off. August twenty second, nineteen seventy two,
19:45
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon's nomination day a second term. John Wayne on
19:49
Speaker 1: hand to welcome Tricky Dick Hanoi, Jane and Flamingo Park
19:52
Speaker 1: around the corner from the Miami Beach Convention Center on
19:55
Speaker 1: a small makeshift stage under the dank stank of grass,
19:58
Speaker 1: speaking to anti war demonstrators all quiet on the Southern
20:01
Speaker 1: Front for the moment, peaceful protests, and then a protester
20:09
Speaker 1: launched a brick at marching delegates. The delegates ran not
20:12
Speaker 1: so fast and Ride and AV was now the official
20:14
Speaker 1: Piggywalk of shame. Protesters were going to force the delegates
20:17
Speaker 1: to walk the gauntlet. Demonstrators in ghostly white death masks
20:20
Speaker 1: taunted the delegates, screaming there's blood on your hands, and
20:23
Speaker 1: murderers are other protesters and Richard Nixon, mass smeared with
20:27
Speaker 1: red paint blood clashed violently with police and photographers, and
20:31
Speaker 1: the cops worried. The plan they heard was for the
20:34
Speaker 1: demonstrators to take the convention hall at the exact moment
20:37
Speaker 1: Nixon was taking the nomination, disrupt the whole fucking thing
20:40
Speaker 1: right there on National TV, and the cops moved in
20:43
Speaker 1: and riot gear. There were now three thousand protesters flooding
20:46
Speaker 1: the streets Miami Dade's finest, strategically positioned school buses sixt
20:50
Speaker 1: deep in front of the convention center's entrance. The protesters advanced,
20:54
Speaker 1: launching rocks and bricks at cops and more arriving delegates.
20:57
Speaker 1: They pounced on dignitaries, their limbs and cop cars. An
21:01
Speaker 1: escaping room, they ran over a Vietnam ven more chance, fuck, no,
21:05
Speaker 1: we won't go cops. Worse, there's the door. Bobby Seal,
21:08
Speaker 1: undeterred by being jailed after the sixty eight riot, took
21:11
Speaker 1: to the street with more of that cascious clay flow,
21:14
Speaker 1: leading a chant of one, two, three, four, we don't
21:16
Speaker 1: want you fucking walk. Delegates were horrified, clutching pearls and
21:19
Speaker 1: pissing pants. Pencil neck young Republicans fired back with bricks
21:23
Speaker 1: of their own. The protesters set American flags of flame
21:25
Speaker 1: and smashed windows of neighboring businesses.
21:27
Speaker 2: And then.
21:29
Speaker 1: The cooty gross Jerry Rubin's grouto Marxist protest theory come
21:34
Speaker 1: to life. There in the middle of Meridian Avenue, a
21:38
Speaker 1: circus elephant marching surrounded by protesters, walking in step and
21:43
Speaker 1: pulling a coffin toward the convention center. It was great theater,
21:48
Speaker 1: but it didn't little to physically advance the rioters, cause
21:51
Speaker 1: the cops held the rioters back from entering the convention center.
21:55
Speaker 1: Nixon was nominated without anterruption. Still, the national press covered
22:03
Speaker 1: at mouths agape and blasted the images back all over
22:06
Speaker 1: the country across the nightly news. At the end of
22:09
Speaker 1: the day, more than two hundred demonstrators were arrested. One
22:12
Speaker 1: news report closed with this item, as police packed a
22:15
Speaker 1: group of violent demonstrators into a yellow police van. The
22:18
Speaker 1: demonstrators were said to break into song, singing the Beatles
22:21
Speaker 1: we all live in a yellow submarine. Watching the report
22:25
Speaker 1: back home in New York on his prize possession his
22:28
Speaker 1: color television, John Lennon thought, for fuck's sake, this was
22:32
Speaker 1: a bloody mess, and if his hands were seen as
22:35
Speaker 1: being all over it, he'd be tossed from the country
22:37
Speaker 1: for sure. The timing for him couldn't have been worse.
22:41
Speaker 1: His deportation case was shockingly going well better than his
22:50
Speaker 1: music career at the moment. Like his ex songwriting partner
22:53
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney, nineteen seventy two was not a good year
22:57
Speaker 1: for John Lennon musically. His newest directord a strictly political
23:01
Speaker 1: affair entitled Sometime in New York City with the aforementioned
23:05
Speaker 1: luck of the Irish. The rallying cry for John Sinclair
23:08
Speaker 1: entitled John Sinclair and a string of other protest knockoffs,
23:12
Speaker 1: was savaged by critics. Rolling Stone called the album quote
23:17
Speaker 1: incipient artistic suicide, and went on to further denounce it
23:20
Speaker 1: by saying, quote, the songs are awful, shallow and derivative,
23:24
Speaker 1: sloppy nursery rhymes to patronize the issues and individuals they
23:28
Speaker 1: seek to exalt. Only a monomaniacal smugness could allow the
23:32
Speaker 1: Lenins to think that this witless doggerel wouldn't insult the
23:35
Speaker 1: intelligence and feelings of any.
23:37
Speaker 2: Audience unquote ouch.
23:40
Speaker 1: Calling John Lennon witless was like calling Richard Nixon a
23:43
Speaker 1: liberal DEM's fighting words, except John Knewitt Who is he kidding?
23:48
Speaker 1: They could knock off a good protest song with the
23:50
Speaker 1: best of them, but an album full of them. This
23:53
Speaker 1: was in nineteen sixty three, and he wasn't Bob Dylan.
23:56
Speaker 1: He was John Lennon, and what he did best was
23:58
Speaker 1: interpret this fucked up world through his own experiences with visceral,
24:02
Speaker 1: subjective simplicity and soul cold turkey, How do you sleep,
24:06
Speaker 1: jealous guy, instant karma. Those were the types of solo
24:10
Speaker 1: efforts from John Lennon that nobody could touch, not his
24:13
Speaker 1: ex Beatle bandmates, not Bob Dylan, not anybody. John, commenting
24:18
Speaker 1: on the world from within it, as opposed to taking
24:20
Speaker 1: a folky, subjective journalistic approach, was the side of the
24:23
Speaker 1: street he was meant to work. Sure, the occasional swipe
24:26
Speaker 1: and angry folk music like give Me Some Truth worked out,
24:28
Speaker 1: but that was because it was entirely subjective, and John
24:31
Speaker 1: could be grant too. To great effect. His song Imagine
24:34
Speaker 1: proved that, and the rest of the songs on the
24:37
Speaker 1: same album, along with the album that preceded it, John
24:39
Speaker 1: Lennon Plastic Gono Band, proved that John Lennon as a songwriter,
24:43
Speaker 1: despite as many flaws and contradictions, was at the top
24:47
Speaker 1: of his game upon exiting the Beatles, which was more
24:50
Speaker 1: than the critics could say for Paul McCartney, whose solo
24:53
Speaker 1: records to that point had all critically flopped. But Paul
24:56
Speaker 1: would be back. John knew it, just as he knew
24:59
Speaker 1: he would be too, if we were only allowed to
25:02
Speaker 1: stay in the US. He couldn't bear going back to England.
25:05
Speaker 1: It would be seen as a defeat, a humiliation of rejection,
25:09
Speaker 1: the same rejection he'd known his whole life. First his
25:12
Speaker 1: dad did want him, then his mom. It singed him
25:15
Speaker 1: as a boy and the pain never left it drove
25:17
Speaker 1: him freeing himself from this pain, the pain of being
25:20
Speaker 1: John or worse, beatle John, all those expectations, No amount
25:24
Speaker 1: of drugs or pussy or politics would.
25:26
Speaker 2: Loosen him from its grip.
25:27
Speaker 1: And now this case, this fucking case, was throwing it
25:30
Speaker 1: all back into his face. And there was no running
25:33
Speaker 1: from himself in England, at least in the States. In
25:35
Speaker 1: New York City he could hide, he could blend in.
25:38
Speaker 1: In New York, New Yorker's largely left him alone, and
25:41
Speaker 1: that was something akin to letting him be himself, and
25:43
Speaker 1: that was freedom.
25:45
Speaker 2: He'd felt that.
25:45
Speaker 1: Freedom nowhere else in the world, not since he was
25:48
Speaker 1: a star anyway, maybe in the early days back in
25:50
Speaker 1: Hamburg or Liverpool, but not in a long long time.
25:54
Speaker 1: Losing that feeling was horrifying, and thus losing the case
25:58
Speaker 1: was horrifying, but not as.
26:00
Speaker 2: Horrifying as what was about to happen. Next, the.
26:07
Speaker 1: Doorbell to John Lennon's Bank Street apartment rang. John, no
26:11
Speaker 1: doubt stoned and used to a revolving door of revolutionaries
26:14
Speaker 1: by now opened the door without checking first to see
26:17
Speaker 1: who was there. Two men burst in, and they were
26:22
Speaker 1: clearly wasted. They were there as they mumbled to collect
26:26
Speaker 1: collect what John asked, your debt came a response John
26:30
Speaker 1: took from the tone in their voices that they meant
26:32
Speaker 1: to make him pay for being rich, for not truly
26:35
Speaker 1: being down with the cause, and the revolution was eating
26:39
Speaker 1: its own. The two Stone roughnecks set about tossing John's
26:43
Speaker 1: apartment looking for cash. John begged them to stop, and
26:46
Speaker 1: they took what they found, which wasn't much. Annoyed, they
26:49
Speaker 1: positioned themselves around John's color television, the one thing the
26:53
Speaker 1: languors Lenin could not do without. He loved that fucking television.
26:57
Speaker 1: It was all he did most of the day, sit
26:58
Speaker 1: in bed, get Stone watched TV.
27:00
Speaker 2: Try to fuck Yoka.
27:01
Speaker 1: Sex was a non starter lately, so the TV was
27:04
Speaker 1: all he had. He begged the two men, please make
27:07
Speaker 1: it care less. Out went the television. They stole the
27:10
Speaker 1: Salvador Dolly lithograph on the wall on their way out, too,
27:13
Speaker 1: for good measure. Fuck John Lennon was pissed. This this
27:18
Speaker 1: is what he got for his contribution to the cause,
27:20
Speaker 1: All the money, the dope, everything he shared. His name
27:23
Speaker 1: is fucking reputation, and this is how he's repaid with
27:26
Speaker 1: a goddamn home invasion, a robbery. His television is fucking
27:30
Speaker 1: television stolen right out from monder room, and there was
27:32
Speaker 1: nothing he could do about it. Everyone knew where he was,
27:35
Speaker 1: where he lived. Literally, if he wasn't safe in his home,
27:38
Speaker 1: where then was he si Beatlemania. It was bad, but
27:41
Speaker 1: this was now somehow worse. It was one big prison
27:44
Speaker 1: all over again, his own attica. He was helpless and scared, angry, and.
27:49
Speaker 2: About to make some changes.
28:12
Speaker 1: The letter set off a chain of events later revealed
28:15
Speaker 1: in court upon discovery South Carolina Senator Sirrom Thurman that
28:19
Speaker 1: old Dixie Bull Thurman was born into white supremacy, rabble
28:24
Speaker 1: rousing legal immigrant pop singers didn't play. Before setting his
28:28
Speaker 1: sights on John Lennon. Senator Thurman took aim at the
28:31
Speaker 1: civil rights movement, blocking bills that would have granted equal
28:34
Speaker 1: rights to blacks, voting against Hawaii's statehood because the islands
28:38
Speaker 1: weren't white enough, and of course, famously switching parties from
28:42
Speaker 1: Democrat to Republican and leading Southern whites who shared his
28:46
Speaker 1: attitudes towards race with him. By the time the early
28:49
Speaker 1: seventies rolled around, Thurman's racist attitude had started to thaw.
28:54
Speaker 1: Maybe it had something to do with the secret he
28:56
Speaker 1: Harvard that back in the nineteen twenties he'd fathered in
28:59
Speaker 1: nil legitimate child with a black lover. By nineteen seventy,
29:03
Speaker 1: Senator Thurman had voted in favor of Martin Luther King
29:06
Speaker 1: Junior's birthday becoming a national holiday, and had hired numerous
29:10
Speaker 1: black men and women to his staff. Such was his
29:12
Speaker 1: turnaround on race that when he died six months after
29:15
Speaker 1: giving up his Senate seat in two thousand and three,
29:18
Speaker 1: at the age of one hundred, fellow senator at the time,
29:21
Speaker 1: Democrat Joe Biden, spoke at his memorial service, but I digress. Nonetheless.
29:27
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy two, Republican Strom Thurman was still seen
29:31
Speaker 1: as a patriot above all else, so when certain actions
29:34
Speaker 1: came to light involving John Lennon's role in freeing John
29:37
Speaker 1: Sinclair from prison, Senator Thurman sat down to write a
29:41
Speaker 1: letter to his boss, Richard M.
29:43
Speaker 2: Nixon.
29:45
Speaker 1: In the letter, Thurman claims that Lenin's involvement with and
29:48
Speaker 1: support of radicals will quote pour tremendous amounts of money
29:51
Speaker 1: into the coffers of the new Left. It can only
29:54
Speaker 1: inevitably lead to a clash between a controlled mob organized
29:57
Speaker 1: by this group in law enforcement officials, the letter had
30:00
Speaker 1: the desired effect. J Edgar Hoover's FBI launched a surveillance
30:04
Speaker 1: and harassment campaign against the Lenins throughout the nineteen seventy
30:08
Speaker 1: two election season. Years later, it was this very harassment
30:12
Speaker 1: campaign that would form the backbone of Lenin's defense and
30:15
Speaker 1: sink the government's case to have him deported. In true
30:19
Speaker 1: Nixon error irony. Of course, a series of status reports
30:22
Speaker 1: from Hoover to Nixon's right hand man H. R. Haldeman
30:25
Speaker 1: was a smoking gun that, once discovered, proved the immigration
30:28
Speaker 1: case against John Lennon was nothing more than an illegitimate
30:31
Speaker 1: political hit job. But on election night, November seventh, nineteen
30:36
Speaker 1: seventy two, John Lennon did not yet know what good
30:39
Speaker 1: fortune was coming his way. He would be spared deportation. No, Instead,
30:44
Speaker 1: he was faced with the gloom of four more years
30:46
Speaker 1: of Richard Milhouse nixon An office, an outcome of which
30:50
Speaker 1: he was certain spelled instant doomed for him, for it
30:53
Speaker 1: would seal his deportation.
30:58
Speaker 2: On that night, he was.
30:59
Speaker 1: In the control room at the Record Plan, listening to
31:01
Speaker 1: Yoko trying to screech her way through something barely passing
31:05
Speaker 1: as a melody.
31:06
Speaker 2: The news of.
31:06
Speaker 1: The returns favoring Nixon only made him to test Yoko's
31:09
Speaker 1: performance more. He sucked on a bottle of Sequila and
31:13
Speaker 1: grew angrier by the second, making disparaging remarks about Yoko's
31:17
Speaker 1: lack of talent to the studio's engineer behind his wife's back. Yoko,
31:21
Speaker 1: if she was aware, to her credit, soldiered on in
31:24
Speaker 1: the vocal booth, which was more than could be said
31:26
Speaker 1: of her husband, who was wearing his defeatism on his
31:28
Speaker 1: double wild lapel like a hungover sailor proudly sporting a
31:31
Speaker 1: fresh herpies outbreak. Mercifully, the session wrapped around four a m.
31:36
Speaker 1: And mister and missus John Lennon headed downtown to Jerry
31:39
Speaker 1: Ruben's apartment to take in the rest of the election
31:42
Speaker 1: night returns and commiserate with their fellow revolutionaries. Ruben nearly
31:47
Speaker 1: shat himself when he heard the screaming outside his door.
31:50
Speaker 1: It was John pissed, pissed, drunk, and pissed off, and
31:54
Speaker 1: reverting back to his primal scream therapy, he barged into
31:57
Speaker 1: the relatively calm apartment gathering Like an inmate freshly escaped
32:01
Speaker 1: from the sanitarium, Zelda Fitzgerald had nothing on him. He
32:05
Speaker 1: grabbed the first woman he saw with two hands on
32:07
Speaker 1: her cheeks, pulled her face into his, and smacked a big,
32:10
Speaker 1: wet one on her. Yoko brought up the rear, nonplussed.
32:14
Speaker 1: This wasn't her first rodeo.
32:16
Speaker 2: John went at Ruben, Revolution, Revolution.
32:19
Speaker 1: How the fuck are you gonna have a fucking revolution
32:21
Speaker 1: when you can't even get McGovern elected.
32:24
Speaker 2: Jerry Rubin was crestfallen. John wasn't wrong.
32:27
Speaker 1: Yoko sat down calmly between a couple on the couch,
32:30
Speaker 1: pulled out a small bag of cocaine, and dutifully began
32:33
Speaker 1: cutting it up into lines. John left Reuben to his
32:37
Speaker 1: guest and turned his wild eyes to the door. An
32:40
Speaker 1: exit was needed fast. Fucked these people, Charlatan's ineffective middle
32:45
Speaker 1: class bourgeois roots.
32:47
Speaker 2: What could they actually do? Nothing?
32:49
Speaker 1: If you want to accomplish anything, leave it to the
32:52
Speaker 1: working man. That's who he was. Something to be free.
32:56
Speaker 1: Fuck all of you, he yelled, swiping a bottle of
32:58
Speaker 1: vodka off the table. As he made his way to
33:00
Speaker 1: the door. He pulled from the bottle of vodka and
33:03
Speaker 1: screamed to no one and everyone at the same time,
33:05
Speaker 1: I'm going to join the weatherman. I'm going to shoot
33:07
Speaker 1: a policeman and with that, John Lennon's revolution was lost
33:19
Speaker 1: years later, after splitting from Yoko, after heading to Los
33:22
Speaker 1: Angeles to drink away his pain, to fuck his way
33:24
Speaker 1: to freedom, to run from his own abandonment issues, and
33:27
Speaker 1: from the guilt of abandoning his first wife Cynthia and
33:30
Speaker 1: his son Julian. After white knuckling it through Hollywood self
33:33
Speaker 1: destruction with a gun toting phil Spector in a double
33:36
Speaker 1: milkshake swinging Harry Nilsen, after finding his way back to
33:40
Speaker 1: New York, back to Yoko remarkably in one piece, after
33:43
Speaker 1: finding out she was pregnant and that at last there
33:45
Speaker 1: would be no miscarriage, after giving birth to their beautiful
33:48
Speaker 1: boy Sean, after freeing himself from whatever the next big
33:51
Speaker 1: thing was, from LSD, from the mah Rishi, from primal
33:55
Speaker 1: scream therapy, from politics, after doubling down on the fantasy
33:58
Speaker 1: of Yoko and shot on family. After all that, In
34:03
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, John Lennon described his years as a radical
34:07
Speaker 1: by saying, quote, I dabbled in so called politics in
34:10
Speaker 1: the late sixties and seventies more out of guilt than
34:13
Speaker 1: anything else. Guilt for being rich, and guilt for thinking
34:16
Speaker 1: peace and love isn't enough, and you have to go
34:19
Speaker 1: out and get shot or get punched in the face
34:21
Speaker 1: to prove I'm one of the people.
34:23
Speaker 2: I was doing it against my instincts.
34:26
Speaker 1: The irony, of course, was that when John Lennon finally
34:29
Speaker 1: did let go of politics and let go of wanting
34:32
Speaker 1: to be as he said shot, he found himself outside
34:36
Speaker 1: his luxury Dakota apartment staring down a gunman, and then
34:42
Speaker 1: I'm shot.
34:44
Speaker 2: John Lennon was right.
34:46
Speaker 1: He was shot, hit four times, and it was bad.
34:50
Speaker 1: The police were on the scene quickly. John was carried
34:53
Speaker 1: into the back of a patrol car by two cops
34:55
Speaker 1: to take him with the quickness to Roosevelt Hospital. The
34:59
Speaker 1: dying man and the sat with his head in the
35:01
Speaker 1: cops thot gurgling blood. The cop looked into the dying
35:04
Speaker 1: man's eyes, couldn't believe what he was seeing.
35:08
Speaker 2: Fuck.
35:08
Speaker 1: The cop looked down at the man and asked, do
35:11
Speaker 1: you know who you are? John Lennon looked up at
35:13
Speaker 1: the officer gave him some truth, whispering yeah, and then
35:18
Speaker 1: he died on December eighth, nineteen eighty. He was free, finally,
35:28
Speaker 1: free from the trap of being John Lennon, Sir Winston O'Boogie,
35:32
Speaker 1: Harry Nilsen's hustle, Phil Spector's hostage, Jerry rubens Stick, Paul
35:36
Speaker 1: McCartney's partner, George and Ringo's leader, the World's Beatle, Cynthia's ex,
35:41
Speaker 1: Julian's absent father, Mimi's embarrassment, his mom's anxiety, his dad's abandonment.
35:47
Speaker 1: He was just John, Yoko's husband, Sean's father.
35:51
Speaker 2: Free but gone just when he found himself.
35:56
Speaker 1: And that's a disgrace. I'm Jay Brennan in this this Disgraceland.
36:17
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36:20
Speaker 1: partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be
36:24
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36:27
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37:08
Speaker 2: Rock a Roller. He's a bad down man.