September, 2017 RollingStoneAus.com | Rolling Stone | 23above a printing press in
San Francisco. “The of-
fi ce was totally agog,” says
Wen ner. “ The Be at le s
were like distant gods.
People didn’t meet them.”
Wenner and his wife,
Jane, wanted to show
Ono and Lennon around
the city. Let It Be, which
chronicles the band’s
contentious studio ses-
sions in 1969, was play-
ing at a theatre. Some-
how, none of the four
had seen it. “The ticket
taker did a double take,”
says Jane. “When
Paul sang ‘Let It
Be’, John began to
cry, and then Yoko
started to cry. Pret-
ty soon we were all
crying. They were
just so raw from
the primal-scream
therapy.”
Around this
time, Wenner was
gently urging Len-
non to agree to an
interview. Finally, in late 1970 – eight months after
Paul McCartney had announced the breakup of
the Beatles in a press release – Lennon decided it
was time to talk. Wenner was summoned to New
York, where Lennon and Ono talked to him for four
hours at the offi ce of Beatles manager Allen Klein.
“My goal was to get the story of the Beatles from
his point of view,” says Wenner. “The story of the
band’s breakup really hadn’t been told.”
What he got was one of the most revealing interviews in rock
histor y. Lennon showed sides of himself the public had never quite
seen: grown-up, cleareyed, even a little bitter. He admitted to
using heroin, blasted the utopian “myth” of the Beatles, and out-
lined the band’s breakup in shocking detail: “That fi lm [Let It Be]
was set up by Paul for Paul. That is one of the main reasons the
Beatles ended. I can’t speak for George, but I pretty damn well
know we got fed up of being sidemen for Paul.”
The 36,000-word interview, divided into two cover stories in
early 1971, was front-page news all around the world. The New
York Times devoted massive space to the more explosive quotes
the paper ran next to a surreal drawing of Lennon ripping a ball
and chain from his head. “This was the fi rst time we really broke
news,” Wenner recalls. “That was the single launch that shot us
into the big time.”
The interview captured both Wenner and Lennon at pivot-
al points in their lives. “I was just 25,” says Wenner. “He had just
turned 30. Being in the Beatles is not an experience you can fully
integrate and assimilate and understand and put into perspective
when you’re that young and it just stopped. Similarly, I’m still a
young kid just learning journalism.”
In the following years, the magazine was side-by-side with Len-
non in his new cause: fi ghting the Nixon administration’s attempts
to deport him for his anti-war eff orts. Rolling Stone ran edi-torials and covered the
legal battle in detail. In
1975, Lennon’s deporta-
tion order was reversed.
“We couldn’t have done
it without you,” Len-
non and Ono wrote to
Rolling Stone in Oc-
tober ’75. “Thanks to all
the wellwishers who sent
cards, ’grammes, gifts,
etc., for the great tri-
ple event ( judges deci-
sion/baby Sean/on J.L.s’
bir thday)!!!”
In late 1980, after
Lennon had taken half
a decade away from the
spotlight to raise his son
Sean, word came that
Lennon and Ono had
completed Double Fan-
tasy, and would agree
to an interview at their
apartment building, the
Dakota. Wenner again
assigned the story to
Cott. Lennon was op-
timistic and blunt dur-
ing the interview, full of
enthusiasm and strong
opinions. “[The press]
only like[s] people when
they’re on the way up,
and when they’re up
there, they’ve got noth-
ing else to do but shit on
them,” Lennon said. “I
cannot be on the way up
again. What they want is
dead heroes, like Sid Vicious and James Dean. I’m not interested
in being a dead fucking hero.”
Cott accompanied Lennon and Ono to the recording studio
as they worked on a remix of “Walking on Thin Ice”. They would
fi nish it three nights later, minutes before he was killed. “The
night they met, they made Tw o V i r g i n s ,” Cott recalls. “Their fi rst
and last dates were both musical collaborations. I fi nd that ex-
traordinary.”
Like much of the country, Wenner learned about Lennon’s
shooting from Howard Cosell’s announcement on Monday Night
Football. Wenner walked across Central Park to the Dakota in
a daze to join a throng of mourners. “There was a bit of singing
and people holding candles,” he says. “People genuinely didn’t
know what to do.”
The next morning, the Rolling Stone staff began work on
a tribute issue celebrating Lennon’s life. “They were mocking up
[cover] photos with John’s portraits,” said Leibovitz. “I said, ‘Jann,
I promised John the cover would be him and Yoko.’ And Jann
backed me up. I said it was the last promise.” In the following
years, Wenner grew close to Ono, and Rolling Stone became a
leading voice in the campaign against handguns. Even in death,
Lennon is still an important part of the magazine. “He put the im-
primatur of John Lennon on this magazine,” says Wenner. “And he
© JIM MARSHALL PHOTOGRAPHY LLC; GETTY remains a North Star for us.” ANDY GREENE
1From Me to You
(1) Lennon and Ono’s
thank-you note to ROLLING
STONE readers after his
deportation battle. (2) Fans
mourn Lennon’s death
outside the Dakota building
in New York City (3) A ’71
note from Lennon to Wenner.(^23)