Skywriting By Word of Mouth

John Lennon wrote the material collected in Skywriting by Word of Mouth during Yoko Ono’s pregnancy with Sean Lennon. After John’s assassination in 1980, his manuscript was stolen from the Lennon’s home. Skywriting was finally published in 1986, and it displays all of Lennon’s extraordinary creativity and inventiveness with language. It includes Lennon’s only piece of autobiography, ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’ as well as short works of fiction, accounts of falling in love, marriage, the break-up of the Beatles and life in America.

John Lennon, MBE, was born in Liverpool in 1940. He was a singer, songwriter, author, and peace activist who gained worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles. He was shot by an obsessive fan and died in December 1980.

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Skywriting By Word of Mouth first published in the USA in 1986 by HarperCollins

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“Be Were Wolf of Limitations,” or … “The Spirit of Boogie Be Upon You”

Chapter 23 or 27: In Which a Harvard Graduate Faints at the Sight of Enlightenment …

I’D ALWAYS HAD a fantasy about a woman who would be a beautiful, intelligent, dark-haired, high-cheek-boned, free-spirited artist (à la Juliette Greco).

My soul mate.

Someone that I had already known, but somehow had lost.

After a short visit to India on my way home from Australia, the image changed slightly—she had to be a dark-eyed Oriental. Naturally, the dream couldn’t come true until I had completed the picture.

Now it was complete.

Of course as a teenager, my sexual fantasies were full of Anita Ekberg and the usual giant Nordic goddesses. That is, until Brigitte Bardot became the “love of my life” in the late Fifties. All my girlfriends who weren’t dark-haired suffered under my constant pressure to become Brigitte. By the time I married my first wife (who was, I think, a natural auburn), she too had become a long-haired blonde with the obligatory bangs.

Met the real Brigitte a few years later. I was on acid and she was on her way out.

I finally met Yoko and the dream became a reality.

The only woman I’d ever met who was my equal in every way imaginable. My better, actually. Although I’d had numerous interesting “affairs” in my previous incarnation, I’d never met anyone worth breaking up a happily-married state of boredom for.

Escape, at last! Someone to leave home for! Somewhere to go. I’d waited an eternity.

Since I was extraordinarily shy (especially around beautiful women), my daydreams necessitated that she be aggressive enough to “save me,” i.e., “take me away from all this.” Yoko, although shy herself, picked up my spirits enough to give me the courage to get the hell out, just in time for me to avoid having to live with my ex-wife’s new nose. She also had had side-interests, much to the surprise of my pre-liberated male ego.

They got the new nose. And I got my dream woman. Yoko.

Having been brought up in the genteel poverty of a lower-middle-class environment, I should not have been surprised by the outpouring of race-hatred and anti-female malice to which we were subjected in that bastion of democracy, Great Britain (including the now-reformed Michael Caine, who said something through his cute Cockney lisp to the effect that “I can’t see why ’ee don’t find a nice English girl”). What a riot! One of “our boys” leaving his Anglo-Saxon (whatever that is) hearth and home and taking up with a bloody Jap to boot! Doesn’t he know about The Bridge on the River Kwai? Doesn’t he remember Pearl Harbour!

The English press had a field day venting all their pent-up hatred of foreigners on Yoko. It must have been hard for them: what with the Common Market and all, they’d had to lay off hating frogs, wogs, clogs, krauts, and eye-ties (in print, that is), not to mention the jungle bunnies. It was humiliating and painful for both of us to have her described as ugly and yellow and other derogatory garbage, especially by a bunch of beer-bellied, red-necked “aging” hacks; you are what you eat and think. We know what they eat and are told what to think: their masters’ leftovers.

It was hard for Yoko to understand, having been recognized all her life as one of the most beautiful and intelligent women in Japan. The racism and sexism were overt. I was ashamed of Britain. Even though I was full of race and anti-female prejudice myself (buried deep where it had been planted), I still bought that English fairy story about the Yanks being the racists: “Not us, old boy, it just wouldn’t be cricket.” The “Gentleman’s Agreement” runs from top to bottom. But I must say I’ve found on my travels that every race thinks it’s superior to every other; the same with class (the American myth being they have no class system).

It was a horrifying experience. I thought of asking Johnny Dankworth and Cleo Lane for advice, but never did (they were the only other biracial couple I’d heard of in Britain). The press led the howling mob, and the foul-mouthed Silent Majority followed suit. The hate mail from the cranks was particularly inspiring; I tried to publish it at Jonathan Cape but they thought … Still, it made a change from the begging letters which always coincided with whatever well-publicized particular problems we were facing at the moment, e.g.,

I’m sorry to hear of your wife’s recent miscarriage. We, too, have suffered the same tragedy as you, sir, but unlike your good selves do not have the wherewithal to purchase a nice semidetached in the south of France, and as you have so much money, you would be making a 100-year-old spastic and his deaf wife and little crippled children very happy. Sir, it’s not too much to ask, … etc.

Or:

I, too, was planted and wrongfully arrested by the world-renowned British police [another myth down the drain], and also recently narrowly escaped death in a car crash in Scotland, and wondered if you could see your way to helping a blind priest and his invalid mother get to church on Sundays … etc., etc., etc.

And was Jerusalem builded there? I doubt it.

Apart from giving me the courage to break out of the Stockbroker Belt … Yoko also gave me the inner strength to look more closely at my other marriage. My real marriage. To the Beatles, which was more stifling than my domestic life. Although I had thought of it often enough, I lacked the guts to make the break earlier.

My life with the Beatles had become a trap. A tape loop. I had made previous short excursions on my own, writing books, helping convert them into a play for the National Theatre. I’d even made a movie without the others (a lousy one at that, directed by that zany man in search of power, Dick Lester). But I had made the movie more in reaction to the fact that the Beatles had decided to stop touring than with real independence in mind. Although even then (1965) my eye was already on freedom.

Basically, I was panicked by the idea of having “nothing to do.” What is life, without touring? Life, that’s what. I always remember to thank Jesus for the end of my touring days; if I hadn’t said that the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus” and upset the very Christian Ku Klux Klan, well, Lord, I might still be up there with all the other performing fleas! God bless America. Thank you, Jesus.

When I finally had the guts to tell the other three that I, quote, wanted a divorce, unquote, they knew it was for real, unlike Ringo and George’s previous threats to leave. I must say I felt guilty for springing it on them at such short notice. After all, I had Yoko—they only had each other. I was guilty enough to give McCartney credit as a co-writer on my first independent single instead of giving it to Yoko, who had actually co-authored it (“Give Peace a Chance”).

I started the band. I disbanded it. It’s as simple as that. Yoko and I instinctively decided that the best form of defense was attack—but in our own sweet way: Two Virgins, our first LP, in which the sight of two slightly overweight ex-junkies in the nude gave John and Yoko a damned good laugh and apoplexy to the Philistines of the so-called civilized world! Including those famous avant-garde revolutionary thinkers, Paul, George and It’s Only Ringo. I bear them no ill will. In retrospect, the Beatles were no more an important part of my life than any other (and less than some).

It’s irrelevant to me whether I ever record again. I started with rock and roll and ended with pure rock and roll (my Rock and Roll album). If the urge ever comes over me and it is irresistible, then I will do it for fun. But otherwise I’d just as soon leave well enough alone. I have never subscribed to the view that artists “owe a debt to the public” any more than youth owes its life to king and country. I made myself what I am today. Good and bad. The responsibility is mine alone.

All roads lead to Rome. I opened a shop; the public bought the goods at fair market value. No big deal. And as for show biz, it was never my life. I often wish, knowing it’s futile, that Yoko and I weren’t famous and we could have a really private life. But it’s spilt milk, or rather blood, and I try not to have regrets and don’t intend to waste energy and time in an effort to become anonymous. That’s as dumb as becoming famous in the first place.

OUR NEXT MOVE was the famous “Bed-In” for peace. It had taken us a year of shy courting before the two “free-spirited” artists actually got in bed together. But when we did, we invited the whole world. We knew that we could never get married and hide away on a honeymoon without being hounded by the press, so we decided to put the situation to good use and have a few laughs at the same time. This was to be real “Living Theater.”

Who could forget the sight of half the world’s press pushing and trampling each other at the door of our bedroom in the vain hope of seeing the Beatle and his nigger doing it for Peace in the Amsterdam Hilton’s honeymoon suite? Or the sighs of disappointment when it dawned on them that there was to be no sex and we weren’t even naked!

For seven days and nights we made ourselves available (9 in the morning till 9 at night) for photographs and interviews. We allowed the fifth (of Scotch) estate to ask us anything they wished. No holds barred. They came up with zilch; only one or two people out of a few hundred visitors to our bedside had any idea whatsoever what was going on. We filmed them all, of course. But we accomplished what we had set out to do; that is, point them in the direction we wanted them to go, rather than suffer them gladly.

It was no use pretending to have a private life; none of that Mick and Bianca bullshit: having tantrums outside the church after they had invited everyone to the wedding in the first place. Daft, I call it.

We tried to repeat our great success in America, by taking the show to Broadway (the Plaza, actually). But the U.S. government decided that we were too dangerous to have around in a hotel bed, talking about peace. So we took the act to Montreal and broadcast (by radio and TV) across the border. I wonder if they thought of sending G. Gordon “Burn, Baby, Burn!” Liddy after us? Many big egos came to see us there: Al Crapp, Dick Gregory, Tim Leary and Rosemary, Tommy Smothers (all except Crapp sang on “Give Peace a Chance”). Did you ever stop to think that Timothy Leary and Gee. Gordon Liddy are opposite sides of the same coin? Two Micks don’t make a WASP.

At the same time whilst we were in Canada, my lithographs of John and Yoko fucking and not fucking were being smuggled across the U.S./Canadian border in trucks (these drawings had been arrested in swinging London). Today, they’re available at your local gallery at a hundred bucks for one. The Two Virgins album cover sells for two hundred. Life doesn’t imitate art; Life is art (that’s what confuses so many up-and-comings; they’re too busy being artists to live).

At that period of our life, people accused us of doing everything for the sake of publicity. Wrong again. Everything we did was publicised anyway. It still is—even though we haven’t talked to the press in a number of years. It makes no difference; it seems they can’t get along without us. Our press-clipping service, which is world-wide, is full of the most bizarre stories. Amongst my favorites is the one that I’ve gone bald and become a recluse “locked in my penthouse”—a cross between Elvis Presley, Greta Garbo and Howard Hughes—occasionally making cryptic statements like “I’ve made my contribution to society and don’t intend to work again!” If bringing up a child isn’t work, what is?

The reality behind the mystery is simply that we are doing what we want to do. Period.

NEXT CAME OUR “revolutionary period,” which blossomed shortly after we landed in the States for a visit. We never intended to live here permanently (although an English astrologer, Patrick Walker, had foretold that I would leave England for good a year earlier). I had no intention of leaving home, for tax or any other reasons. It just happened that way.

We’d got a bit of a reputation from hanging out with the Cambridge Graduate School of Revolutionaries in the U.K. They made us feel so guilty about not hating everyone who wasn’t poor that I even wrote and recorded the rather embarrassing “Power to the People” ten years too late (as the now-famous Hunter “Fear and Loathing for a Living” Thompson pointed out in his Vegas book). We kept the royalties, of course.

Anyway, upon our arrival in the U.S., we were practically met off the plane by the “Mork and Mindy” of the Sixties—Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman—and promptly taken on a tour of New York’s “underground,” which consisted mainly of David Peel singing about dope in Washington Square Park. Jerry and Abbie: two classic, fun-loving hustlers. I can do without Marx and Jesus.