Posted on 10/17/2008 6:34:24 PM PDT by ETL
"Power to the People"
The Lost John Lennon Interview
By TARIQ ALI and ROBIN BLACKBURN
Editors’ Note: It was twenty-five years ago today that John Lennon was murdered outside the Dakota building on Central Park West in New York City. We doubt many CounterPunchers have read the following 1971 interview with Lennon done by CounterPunchers Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn. It’s a lot more interesting that the interminable Q and A with Lennon done by Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner. Tariq and Robin allowed Lennon to talk and spurred him on when he showed signs of flagging. Lennon recounts about how he and George Harrison bucked their handlers and went on record against the Vietnam War, discusses class politics in an engaging manner, defends country and western music and the blues, suggests Dylan’s best songs stem from revolutionary Irish and Scottish ballads and dissects his three versions of “Revolution”.
The interview, which inspired Lennon to write “Power to the People”, ran in The Red Mole, a Trotskyist broadsheet put out by the Internation Marxist Group, a British appendage of the Fourth International. The Mole had popped up after its predecessor, The Black Dwarf, went to ground. As you’ll see, those were different days. The interview is included in Tariq Ali’s Streetfighting Years, recently published by Verso. AC / JSC
Thursday 21st January 1971
John Lennon and Yoko Ono talk to Robin Blackburn and Tariq Ali for the left-wing newspaper Red Mole
Two excerpts:
TA: When did you start breaking out of the role imposed on you as a Beatle?
JL: Even during the Beatle heyday I tried to go against it, so did George. We went to America a few times and Epstein always tried to waffle on at us about saying nothing about Vietnam. So there came a time when George and I said 'Listen, when they ask next time, we’re going to say we don’t like that war and we think they should get right out.' That’s what we did. At that time this was a pretty radical thing to do, especially for the ‘Fab Four’. It was the first 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 so pressurised that there was hardly any chance of expressing ourselves, especially working at that rate, touring continually and always kept in a cocoon of myths and dreams. It’s pretty hard when you are Caesar and everyone is saying how wonderful you are and they are giving you all the goodies and the girls, it’s pretty hard to break out of that, to say 'Well, I don’t want to be king, I want to be real.' So in its way the second political thing I did was to say 'The Beatles are bigger than Jesus.'
(snip)
TA: In a way you were even thinking about politics when you seemed to be knocking revolution?
JL: Ah, sure, 'Revolution'. There were two versions of that song but the underground left only picked up on the one that said 'count me out'. The original version which ends up on the LP said 'count me in' too; I put in 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 was painting in sound a picture of revolution--but I made a mistake, you know. The mistake was that it was anti-revolution.
On the version released as a single I said 'when you talk about destruction you can count me out'. I didn't want to get killed. I didn't really know that much about the Maoists, but I just knew that they seemed to be so few and yet they painted themselves green and stood in front of the police waiting to get picked off. I just thought it was unsubtle, you know. I thought the original Communist revolutionaries coordinated themselves a bit better and didn't go around 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 China and everything that related to the working class, even though I was playing the capitalist game. ..."
Lots more:
“Power to the People”
The Lost John Lennon Interview (1971)
http://www.newsocialist.org/index.php?id=614
You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world.
You tell me that it's evolution,
Well, you know
We all want to change the world.
But when you talk about destruction,
Don't you know that you can count me out. In.
Don't you know it's going to be all right,
all right, all right.
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan.
You ask me for a contribution,
Well, you know
We all do what we can.
If you want money for people with minds that hate,
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait.
Don't you know it's going to be all right,
all right, all right.
You say you'll change a constitution
Well, you know
We'd all love to change your head.
You tell me it's the institution,
Well, you know
You better free your mind instead.
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao,
You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow.
Don't you know it's going to be all right,
all right, all right.
I haven’t even heard the found interview yet.
Because this guy is still worshiped by millions of Americans who viewed him as a man of 'peace, love and togetherness'. This interview, which appears to be legit, exposes that myth.
I loved John Lennin’s music but I think his left wing politics were just an extension of his inferiority complex and his manipulable personality. The radical left set him up to make him feel powerful and important.
Just look at how Ono led him around. He was a puppet.
Oops! Lennon! Talk about a Freudian slip, lol.
wasn’t he killed in December, not Oct?
That interview is proof that John Lennon did waayy too many drugs.
“The idea is not to comfort people, not to make them feel better but to make them feel worse, to constantly put before them the degradations and humiliations they go through to get what they call a living wage.
“ - John Lennon, 1971 or is it Pelosi?
John Lennon lyrics - Give Peace A Chance
(John Lennon & Paul McCartney)
Ev'rybody's talking about
Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism
This-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m.
All we are saying is give peace a chance
All we are saying is give peace a chance
C'mon
Ev'rybody's talking about Ministers,
Sinisters, Banisters and canisters
Bishops and Fishops and Rabbis and Pop eyes,
And bye bye, bye byes.
All we are saying is give peace a chance
Or this guy...
From Rules for Radicals, Alinsky outlines his strategy in organizing, writing:
"There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution."[2]
[2] Saul Alinsky, The Latter Rain
http://latter-rain.com/ltrain/alinski.htm
I guess the article is from October, 2005? I didn't notice a date associated with it.
Oh, please. Lennon was a light-weight who stumbled into vast wealth. He holed-up in his $25 million gated apartment with his $200M fortune, crooning about love and peace, and crapping on US, until a nobody not of love and peace put three .38 specials into him. Loser.
Oops! Sorry. I meant Dec 2005.
This line is from the interview. Maybe Obama has been reading Lennon.
lol! Yeah, I noticed that too.
December 8, 1980.
Poor pathetic people like Lennonnever realize that “Power to the People” is a conservative principle.
Poor pathetic people like Lennon never realize that “Power to the People” is a conservative principle.
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