The Famous 1980 Lennon Playboy Interview! (Part 1 of 3)

Playboy Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono:

Published in January 1981 issue

Interviewed by David Sheff, September 1980

Article ©1981 Playboy Press

PLAYBOY: "The word is out: John Lennon and Yoko Ono are back in the studio, recording again for the first time since 1975, when they vanished from public view. Let's start with you, John. What have you been doing?"

LENNON: "I've been baking bread and looking after the baby."

PLAYBOY: "With what secret projects going on in the basement?"

LENNON: "That's like what everyone else who has asked me that question over the last few years says. 'But what else have you been doing?' To which I say, 'Are you kidding?' Because bread and babies, as every housewife knows, is a full-time job. After I made the loaves, I felt like I had conquered something. But as I watched the bread being eaten, I thought, Well, Jesus, don't I get a gold record or knighted or nothing?"

PLAYBOY: "Why did you become a househusband?"

LENNON: "There were many reasons. I had been under obligation or contract from the time I was 22 until well into my 30s. After all those years, it was all I knew. I wasn't free. I was boxed in. My contract was the physical manifestation of being in prison. It was more important to face myself and face that reality than to continue a life of rock 'n' roll... and to go up and down with the whims of either your own performance or the public's opinion of you. Rock 'n' roll was not fun anymore. I chose not to take the standard options in my business... going to Vegas and singing your great hits, if you're lucky, or going to hell, which is where Elvis went."

ONO: "John was like an artist who is very good at drawing circles. He sticks to that and it becomes his label. He has a gallery to promote that. And the next year, he will do triangles or something. It doesn't reflect his life at all. When you continue doing the same thing for ten years, you get a prize for having done it."

LENNON: "You get the big prize when you get cancer and you have been drawing circles and triangles for ten years. I had become a craftsman and I could have continued being a craftsman. I respect craftsmen, but I am not interested in becoming one."

ONO: "Just to prove that you can go on dishing out things."

PLAYBOY: "You're talking about records, of course."

LENNON: "Yeah, to churn them out because I was expected to, like so many people who put out an album every six months because they're supposed to."

PLAYBOY: "Would you be referring to Paul McCartney?"

LENNON: "Not only Paul. But I had lost the initial freedom of the artist by becoming enslaved to the image of what the artist is supposed to do. A lot of artists kill themselves because of it, whether it is through drink, like Dylan Thomas, or through insanity, like Van Gogh, or through V.D., like Gauguin."

PLAYBOY: "Most people would have continued to churn out the product. How were you able to see a way out?"

LENNON: "Most people don't live with Yoko Ono."

PLAYBOY: "Which means?"

LENNON: "Most people don't have a companion who will tell the truth and refuse to live with a bullshit artist, which I am pretty good at. I can bullshit myself and everybody around. Yoko: That's my answer."

PLAYBOY: "What did she do for you?"

LENNON: "She showed me the possibility of the alternative. 'You don't have to do this.' 'I don't? Really? But-but-but-but-but...' Of course, it wasn't that simple and it didn't sink in overnight. It took constant reinforcement. Walking away is much harder than carrying on. I've done both. On demand and on schedule, I had turned out records from 1962 to 1975. Walking away seemed like what the guys go through at 65, when suddenly they're supposed to not exist anymore and they're sent out of the office..." (knocks on the desk three times) "'Your life is over. Time for golf.'"

PLAYBOY: "Yoko, how did you feel about John's becoming a househusband?"

ONO: "When John and I would go out, people would come up and say, 'John, what are you doing?' but they never asked about me, because, as a woman, I wasn't supposed to be doing anything."

LENNON: "When I was cleaning the cat shit and feeding Sean, she was sitting in rooms full of smoke with men in three-piece suits that they couldn't button."

ONO: "I handled the business: old business... Apple, Maclen," (the Beatles' record company and publishing company, respectively) "and new investments."

LENNON: "We had to face the business. It was either another case of asking some daddy to come solve our business or having one of us do it. Those lawyers were getting a quarter of a million dollars a year to sit around a table and eat salmon at the Plaza. Most of them didn't seem interested in solving the problems. Every lawyer had a lawyer. Each Beatle had four or five people working. So we felt we had to look after that side of the business and get rid of it and deal with it before we could start dealing with our own life. And the only one of us who has the talent or the ability to deal with it on that level is Yoko."

PLAYBOY: "Did you have experience handling business matters of that proportion?"

ONO: "I learned. The law is not a mystery to me anymore. Politicians are not a mystery to me. I'm not scared of all that establishment anymore. At first, my own accountant and my own lawyer could not deal with the fact that I was telling them what to do."

LENNON: "There was a bit of an attitude that this is John's wife, but surely she can't really be representing him."

ONO: "A lawyer would send a letter to the directors, but instead of sending it to me, he would send it to John or send it to my lawyer. You'd be surprised how much insult I took from them initially. There was all this 'But you don't know anything about law; I can't talk to you.' I said, 'All right, talk to me in the way I can understand it. I am a director, too.'"

LENNON: "They can't stand it. But they have to stand it, because she is who represents us." (chuckles) "They're all male, you know, just big and fat, vodka lunch, shouting males, like trained dogs, trained to attack all the time. Recently, she made it possible for us to earn a large sum of money that benefited all of them and they fought and fought not to let her do it, because it was her idea and she was a woman and she was not a professional. But she did it, and then one of the guys said to her, 'Well, Lennon does it again.' But Lennon didn't have anything to do with it."

PLAYBOY: "Why are you returning to the studio and public life?"

LENNON: "You breathe in and you breathe out. We feel like doing it and we have something to say. Also, Yoko and I attempted a few times to make music together, but that was a long time ago and people still had the idea that the Beatles were some kind of sacred thing that shouldn't step outside its circle. It was hard for us to work together then. We think either people have forgotten or they have grown up by now, so we can make a second foray into that place where she and I are together, making music... simply that. It's not like I'm some wondrous, mystic prince from the rock-'n'-roll world dabbling in strange music with this exotic, Oriental dragon lady, which was the picture projected by the press before."

PLAYBOY: "Some people have accused you of playing to the media. First you become a recluse, then you talk selectively to the press because you have a new album coming out."

LENNON: "That's ridiculous. People always said John and Yoko would do anything for the publicity. In the Newsweek article," (September 29, 1980) "it says the reporter asked us, 'Why did you go underground?' Well, she never asked it that way and I didn't go underground. I just stopped talking to the press. It got to be pretty funny. I was calling myself Greta Hughes or Howard Garbo through that period. But still the gossip items never stopped. We never stopped being in the press, but there seemed to be more written about us when we weren't talking to the press than when we were."

PLAYBOY: "How do you feel about all the negative press that's been directed through the years at Yoko, your 'dragon lady,' as you put it?"

LENNON: "We are both sensitive people and we were hurt a lot by it. I mean, we couldn't understand it. When you're in love, when somebody says something like, 'How can you be with that woman?' you say, 'What do you mean? I am with this goddess of love, the fulfillment of my whole life. Why are you saying this? Why do you want to throw a rock at her or punish me for being in love with her?' Our love helped us survive it, but some of it was pretty violent. There were a few times when we nearly went under, but we managed to survive and here we are." (looks upward) "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

PLAYBOY: "But what about the charge that John Lennon is under Yoko's spell, under her control?"

LENNON: "Well, that's rubbish, you know. Nobody controls me. I'm uncontrollable. The only one who controls me is me, and that's just barely possible."

PLAYBOY: "Still, many people believe it."

LENNON: "Listen, if somebody's gonna impress me, whether it be a Maharishi or a Yoko Ono, there comes a point when the emperor has no clothes. There comes a point when I will see. So for all you folks out there who think that I'm having the wool pulled over my eyes, well, that's an insult to me. Not that you think less of Yoko, because that's your problem. What I think of her is what counts! Because... fuck you, brother and sister... you don't know what's happening. I'm not here for you. I'm here for me and her and the baby!"

ONO: "Of course, it's a total insult to me..."

LENNON: "Well, you're always insulted, my dear wife. It's natural..."

ONO: "Why should I bother to control anybody?"

LENNON: "She doesn't need me."

ONO: "I have my own life, you know."

LENNON: "She doesn't need a Beatle. Who needs a Beatle?"

ONO: "Do people think I'm that much of a con? John lasted two months with the Maharishi. Two months. I must be the biggest con in the world, because I've been with him 13 years."

LENNON: "But people do say that."

PLAYBOY: "That's our point. Why?"

LENNON: "They want to hold on to something they never had in the first place. Anybody who claims to have some interest in me as an individual artist or even as part of the Beatles has absolutely misunderstood everything I ever said if they can't see why I'm with Yoko. And if they can't see that, they don't see anything. They're just jacking off to... it could be anybody. Mick Jagger or somebody else. Let them go jack off to Mick Jagger, OK? I don't need it."

PLAYBOY: "He'll appreciate that."

LENNON: "I absolutely don't need it. Let them chase Wings. Just forget about me. If that's what you want, go after Paul or Mick. I ain't here for that. If that's not apparent in my past, I'm saying it in black and green, next to all the tits and asses on page 196. Go play with the other boys. Don't bother me. Go play with the Rolling Wings."

PLAYBOY: "Do you..."

LENNON: "No, wait a minute. Let's stay with this a second; sometimes I can't let go of it." (He is on his feet, climbing up the refrigerator) "Nobody ever said anything about Paul's having a spell on me or my having one on Paul! They never thought that was abnormal in those days, two guys together, or four guys together! Why didn't they ever say, 'How come those guys don't split up? I mean, what's going on backstage? What is this Paul and John business? How can they be together so long?' We spent more time together in the early days than John and Yoko: the four of us sleeping in the same room, practically in the same bed, in the same truck, living together night and day, eating, shitting and pissing together! All right? Doing everything together! Nobody said a damn thing about being under a spell. Maybe they said we were under the spell of Brian Epstein or George Martin." (the Beatles' first manager and producer, respectively) "There's always somebody who has to be doing something to you. You know, they're congratulating the Stones on being together 112 years. Whoooopee! At least Charlie and Bill still got their families. In the Eighties, they'll be asking, 'Why are those guys still together? Can't they hack it on their own? Why do they have to be surrounded by a gang? Is the little leader scared somebody's gonna knife him in the back?' That's gonna be the question. That's-a-gonna be the question! They're gonna look back at the Beatles and the Stones and all those guys as relics. The days when those bands were just all men will be on the newsreels, you know. They will be showing pictures of the guy with lipstick wriggling his ass and the four guys with the evil black make-up on their eyes trying to look raunchy. That's gonna be the joke in the future, not a couple singing together or living and working together. It's all right when you're 16, 17, 18 to have male companions and idols, OK? It's tribal and it's gang and it's fine. But when it continues and you're still doing it when you're 40, that means you're still 16 in the head."

PLAYBOY: "Let's start at the beginning. Tell us the story of how the wondrous mystic prince and the exotic Oriental dragon lady met."

LENNON: "It was in 1966 in England. I'd been told about this 'event'... this Japanese avant-garde artist coming from America. I was looking around the gallery and I saw this ladder and climbed up and got a look in this spyglass on the top of the ladder... you feel like a fool... and it just said, 'Yes.' Now, at the time, all the avant-garde was smash the piano with a hammer and break the sculpture and anti-, anti-, anti-, anti-, anti. It was all boring negative crap, you know. And just that Yes made me stay in a gallery full of apples and nails. There was a sign that said, Hammer A Nail In, so I said, 'Can I hammer a nail in?' But Yoko said no, because the show wasn't opening until the next day. But the owner came up and whispered to her, 'Let him hammer a nail in. You know, he's a millionaire. He might buy it.' And so there was this little conference, and finally she said, 'OK, you can hammer a nail in for five shillings.' So smartass says, 'Well, I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in.' And that's when we really met. That's when we locked eyes and she got it and I got it and, as they say in all the interviews we do, the rest is history."

PLAYBOY: "What happened next?"

LENNON: "Of course, I was a Beatle, but things had begun to change. In 1966, just before we met, I went to Almeria, Spain, to make the movie 'How I Won the War.' It did me a lot of good to get away. I was there six weeks. I wrote 'Strawberry Fields Forever' there, by the way. It gave me time to think on my own, away from the others. From then on, I was looking for somewhere to go, but I didn't have the nerve to really step out on the boat by myself and push it off. But when I fell in love with Yoko, I knew, My God, this is different from anything I've ever known. This is something other. This is more than a hit record, more than gold, more than everything. It is indescribable."

PLAYBOY: "Were falling in love with Yoko and wanting to leave the Beatles connected?"

LENNON: "As I said, I had already begun to want to leave, but when I met Yoko is like when you meet your first woman. You leave the guys at the bar. You don't go play football anymore. You don't go play snooker or billiards. Maybe some guys do it on Friday night or something, but once I found the woman, the boys became of no interest whatsoever other than being old school friends. 'Those wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine.' We got married three years later, in 1969. That was the end of the boys. And it just so happened that the boys were well known and weren't just local guys at the bar. Everybody got so upset over it. There was a lot of shit thrown at us. A lot of hateful stuff."

ONO: "Even now, I just read that Paul said, 'I understand that he wants to be with her, but why does he have to be with her all the time?'"

LENNON: "Yoko, do you still have to carry that cross? That was years ago."

ONO: "No, no, no. He said it recently. I mean, what happened with John is like, I sort of went to bed with this guy that I liked and suddenly the next morning, I see these three in-laws, standing there."

LENNON: "I've always thought there was this underlying thing in Paul's 'Get Back.' When we were in the studio recording it, every time he sang the line 'Get back to where you once belonged,' he'd look at Yoko."

PLAYBOY: "Are you kidding?"

LENNON: "No. But maybe he'll say I'm paranoid."

(the next portion of the interview took place with Lennon alone)

PLAYBOY: "This may be the time to talk about those 'in-laws,' as Yoko put it. John, you've been asked this a thousand times, but why is it so unthinkable that the Beatles might get back together to make some music?"

LENNON: "Do you want to go back to high school? Why should I go back ten years to provide an illusion for you that I know does not exist? It cannot exist."

PLAYBOY: "Then forget the illusion. What about just to make some great music again? Do you acknowledge that the Beatles made great music?"

LENNON: "Why should the Beatles give more? Didn't they give everything on God's earth for ten years? Didn't they give themselves? You're like the typical sort of love-hate fan who says, 'Thank you for everything you did for us in the Sixties... would you just give me another shot? Just one more miracle?'"

PLAYBOY: "We're not talking about miracles... just good music."

LENNON: "When Rodgers worked with Hart and then worked with Hammerstein, do you think he should have stayed with one instead of working with the other? Should Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis have stayed together because I used to like them together? What is this game of doing things because other people want it? The whole Beatle idea was to do what you want, right? To take your own responsibility."

PLAYBOY: "Alright, but get back to the music itself. You don't agree that the Beatles created the best rock 'n roll that's been produced?"

LENNON: "I don't. The Beatles, you see... I'm too involved in them artistically. I cannot see them objectively. I cannot listen to them objectively. I'm dissatisfied with every record the Beatles ever fucking made. There ain't one of them I wouldn't remake... including all the Beatles records and all my individual ones. So I cannot possibly give you an assessment of what the Beatles are. When I was a Beatle, I thought we were the best fucking group in the god-damned world. And believing that is what made us what we were... whether we call it the best rock 'n roll group or the best pop group or whatever. But you play me those tracks today and I want to remake every damn one of them. There's not a single one... I heard 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' on the radio last night. It's abysmal, you know. The track is just terrible. I mean, it's great, but it wasn't made right, know what I mean? But that's the artistic trip, isn't it? That's why you keep going. But to get back to your original question about the Beatles and their music, the answer is that we did some good stuff and we did some bad stuff."

PLAYBOY: "Many people feel that none of the songs Paul has done alone match the songs he did as a Beatle. Do you honestly feel that any of your songs on the Plastic Ono Band records will have the lasting imprint of 'Eleanor Rigby' or 'Strawberry Fields'?"

LENNON: "'Imagine,' 'Love' and those Plastic Ono Band songs stand up to any song that was written when I was a Beatle. Now, it may take you 20 or 30 years to appreciate that, but the fact is, if you check those songs out, you will see that it is as good as any fucking stuff that was ever done."

PLAYBOY: "It seems as if you're trying to say to the world, 'We were just a good band making some good music,' while a lot of the rest of the world is saying, 'It wasn't just some good music, it was the best.'"

LENNON: "Well, if it was the best, so what?"

PLAYBOY: "So..."

LENNON: "It can never be again! Everyone always talks about a good thing coming to an end, as if life was over. But I'll be 40 when this interview comes out. Paul is 38. Elton John, Bob Dylan... we're all relatively young people. The game isn't over yet. Everyone talks in terms of the last record or the last Beatle concert... but, God willing, there are another 40 years of productivity to go. I'm not judging whether 'I am the Walrus' is better or worse than 'Imagine.' It is for others to judge. I am doing it. I do. I don't stand back and judge... I do."

PLAYBOY: "You keep saying you don't want to go back ten years, that too much has changed. Don't you ever feel it would be interesting... never mind cosmic, just interesting... to get together, with all your new experiences, and cross your talents?"

LENNON: "Wouldn't it be interesting to take Elvis back to his Sun Records period? I don't know. But I'm content to listen to his Sun Records. I don't want to dig him up out of the grave. The Beatles don't exist and can never exist again. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Richard Starkey could put on a concert... but it can never be the Beatles singing 'Strawberry Fields' or 'I Am The Walrus' again, because we are not in our 20s. We cannot be that again, nor can the people who are listening."

PLAYBOY: "But aren't you the one who is making it too important? What if it were just nostalgic fun? A high school reunion?"

LENNON: "I never went to high school reunions. My thing is, Out of sight, out of mind. That's my attitude toward life. So I don't have any romanticism about any part of my past. I think of it only inasmuch as it gave me pleasure or helped me grow psychologically. That is the only thing that interests me about yesterday. I don't believe in yesterday, by the way. You know I don't believe in yesterday. I am only interested in what I am doing now."

PLAYBOY: "What about the people of your generation, the ones who feel a certain kind of music and spirit died when the Beatles broke up?"

LENNON: "If they didn't understand the Beatles and the Sixties then, what the fuck could we do for them now? Do we have to divide the fish and the loaves for the multitudes again? Do we have to get crucified again? Do we have to do the walking on water again because a whole pile of dummies didn't see it the first time, or didn't believe it when they saw it? You know, that's what they're asking: 'Get off the cross. I didn't understand the first bit yet. Can you do that again?' No way. You can never go home. It doesn't exist."

PLAYBOY: "Do you find that the clamor for a Beatles reunion has died down?"

LENNON: "Well, I heard some Beatles stuff on the radio the other day and I heard 'Green Onion' ...no, 'Glass Onion,' I don't even know my own songs! I listened to it because it was a rare track..."

PLAYBOY: "That was the one that contributed to the 'Paul McCartney is dead' uproar because of the lyric 'The walrus is Paul.'"

LENNON: "Yeah. That line was a joke, you know. That line was put in partly because I was feeling guilty because I was with Yoko, and I knew I was finally high and dry. In a perverse way, I was sort of saying to Paul, 'Here, have this crumb, have this illusion, have this stroke... because I'm leaving you.' Anyway, it's a song they don't usually play. When a radio station has a Beatles weekend, they usually play the same ten songs... 'A Hard Day's Night,' 'Help!,' 'Yesterday,' 'Something,' 'Let It Be' ...you know, there's all that wealth of material, but we hear only ten songs. So the deejay says, 'I want to thank John, Paul, George and Ringo for not getting back together and spoiling a good thing.' I thought it was a good sign. Maybe people are catching on."

PLAYBOY: "Aside from the millions you've been offered for a reunion concert, how did you feel about producer Lorne Michaels' generous offer of $3200 for appearing together on 'Saturday Night Live' a few years ago?"

LENNON: "Oh, yeah. Paul and I were together watching that show. He was visiting us at our place in the Dakota. We were watching it and almost went down to the studio, just as a gag. We nearly got into a cab, but we were actually too tired."

PLAYBOY: "How did you and Paul happen to be watching TV together?"

LENNON: "That was a period when Paul just kept turning up at our door with a guitar. I would let him in, but finally I said to him, 'Please call before you come over. It's not 1956 and turning up at the door isn't the same anymore. You know, just give me a ring.' He was upset by that, but I didn't mean it badly. I just meant that I was taking care of a baby all day and some guy turns up at the door... But, anyway, back on that night, he and Linda walked in and he and I were just sitting there, watching the show, and we went, 'Ha-ha, wouldn't it be funny if we went down?' but we didn't."

PLAYBOY: "Was that the last time you saw Paul?"

LENNON: "Yes, but I didn't mean it like that."

PLAYBOY: "We're asking because there's always a lot of speculation about whether the Fab Four are dreaded enemies or the best of friends."

LENNON: "We're neither. I haven't seen any of the Beatles for I don't know how much time. Somebody asked me what I thought of Paul's last album and I made some remark like, I thought he was depressed and sad. But then I realized I hadn't listened to the whole damn thing. I heard one track... the hit 'Coming Up,' which I thought was a good piece of work. Then I heard something else that sounded like he was depressed. But I don't follow their work. I don't follow Wings, you know. I don't give a shit what Wings is doing, or what George's new album is doing, or what Ringo is doing. I'm not interested, no more than I am in what Elton John or Bob Dylan is doing. It's not callousness, it's just that I'm too busy living my own life to be following what other people are doing, whether they're the Beatles or guys I went to college with or people I had intense relationships with before I met the Beatles."

PLAYBOY: "Besides 'Coming Up,' what do you think of Paul's work since he left the Beatles?"

LENNON: "I kind of admire the way Paul started back from scratch, forming a new band and playing in small dance halls, because that's what he wanted to do with the Beatles... he wanted us to go back to the dance halls and experience that again. But I didn't. That was one of the problems, in a way, that he wanted to relive it all or something... I don't know what it was. But I kind of admire the way he got off his pedestal. Now he's back on it again, but I mean, he did what he wanted to do. That's fine, but it's just not what I wanted to do."

PLAYBOY: "What about the music?"

LENNON: "'The Long and Winding Road' was the last gasp from him. Although I really haven't listened."

PLAYBOY: "You say you haven't listened to Paul's work and haven't really talked to him since that night in your apartment..."

LENNON: "Really talked to him, no, that's the operative word. I haven't really talked to him in ten years. Because I haven't spent time with him. I've been doing other things and so has he. You know, he's got 25 kids and about 20,000,000 records out. How can he spend time talking? He's always working."

PLAYBOY: "Then let's talk about the work you did together. Generally speaking, what did each of you contribute to the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team?"

LENNON: "Well, you could say that he provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, a certain bluesy edge. There was a period when I thought I didn't write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock 'n roll. But, of course, when I think of some of my own songs... 'In My Life' or some of the early stuff... 'This Boy.' I was writing melody with the best of them. Paul had a lot of training, could play a lot of instruments. He'd say, 'Well, why don't you change that there? You've done that note 50 times in the song.' You know, I'll grab a note and ram it home. Then again, I'd be the one to figure out where to go with a song... a story that Paul would start. In a lot of the songs, my stuff is the middle-eight, the bridge."

PLAYBOY: "For example?"

LENNON: "Take 'Michelle.' Paul and I were staying somewhere, and he walked in and hummed the first few bars, with the words, you know-- (sings verse of 'Michelle') and he says, 'Where do I go from here?' I'd been listening to blues singer Nina Simone, who did something like 'I love you!' in one of her songs and that made me think of the middle-eight for 'Michelle.' (sings) 'I love you, I love you, I lo-ove you...'"

PLAYBOY: "What was the difference in terms of lyrics?"

LENNON: "I always had an easier time with lyrics, though Paul is quite a capable lyricist who doesn't think he is. So he doesn't go for it. Rather than face the problem, he would avoid it. 'Hey Jude' is a damn good set of lyrics. I made no contribution to the lyrics there. And a couple of lines he has come up with show indications of a good lyricist. But he just hasn't taken it anywhere. Still, in the early days, we didn't care about lyrics as long as the song had some vague theme... she loves you, he loves him, they all love each other. It was the hook, line and sound we were going for. That's still my attitude, but I can't leave lyrics alone. I have to make them make sense apart from the songs."

PLAYBOY: "What's an example of a lyric you and Paul worked on together?"

LENNON: "In 'We Can Work It Out,' Paul did the first half, I did the middle-eight. But you've got Paul writing, 'We can work it out/We can work it out' --real optimistic, y' know, and me, impatient: 'Life is very short and there's no time/For fussing and fighting, my friend....'"

PLAYBOY: "Paul tells the story and John philosophizes."

LENNON: "Sure. Well, I was always like that, you know. I was like that before the Beatles and after the Beatles. I always asked why people did things and why society was like it was. I didn't just accept it for what it was apparently doing. I always looked below the surface."

PLAYBOY: "When you talk about working together on a single lyric like 'We Can Work It Out,' it suggests that you and Paul worked a lot more closely than you've admitted in the past. Haven't you said that you wrote most of your songs separately, despite putting both of your names on them?"

LENNON: "Yeah, I was lying. (laughs) It was when I felt resentful, so I felt that we did everything apart. But, actually, a lot of the songs we did eyeball to eyeball."

PLAYBOY: "But many of them were done apart, weren't they?

LENNON: "Yeah. 'Sgt. Pepper' was Paul's idea, and I remember he worked on it a lot and suddenly called me to go into the studio, said it was time to write some songs. On 'Pepper,' under the pressure of only ten days, I managed to come up with 'Lucy in the Sky' and 'Day in the Life.' We weren't communicating enough, you see. And later on, that's why I got resentful about all that stuff. But now I understand that it was just the same competitive game going on."

PLAYBOY: "But the competitive game was good for you, wasn't it?"

LENNON: "In the early days. We'd make a record in 12 hours or something; they would want a single every three months and we'd have to write it in a hotel room or in a van. So the cooperation was functional as well as musical."

PLAYBOY: "Don't you think that cooperation, that magic between you, is something you've missed in your work since?"

LENNON: "I never actually felt a loss. I don't want it to sound negative, like I didn't need Paul, because when he was there, obviously, it worked. But I can't... it's easier to say what I gave to him than what he gave to me. And he'd say the same."

PLAYBOY: "Just a quick aside, but while we're on the subject of lyrics and your resentment of Paul, what made you write 'How Do You Sleep?,' which contains lyrics such as 'Those freaks was right when they said you was dead' and 'The only thing you done was Yesterday/And since you've gone, you're just Another Day'?"

LENNON: (smiles) "You know, I wasn't really feeling that vicious at the time. But I was using my resentment toward Paul to create a song, let's put it that way. He saw that it pointedly refers to him, and people kept hounding him about it. But, you know, there were a few digs on his album before mine. He's so obscure other people didn't notice them, but I heard them. I thought, Well, I'm not obscure, I just get right down to the nitty-gritty. So he'd done it his way and I did it mine. But as to the line you quoted, yeah, I think Paul died creatively, in a way."

PLAYBOY: "That's what we were getting at: You say that what you've done since the Beatles stands up well, but isn't it possible that with all of you, it's been a case of the creative whole being greater than the parts?"

LENNON: "I don't know whether this will gel for you: When the Beatles played in America for the first time, they played pure craftsmanship. Meaning they were already old hands. The jism had gone out of the performances a long time ago. In the same respect, the songwriting creativity had left Paul and me in the mid-Sixties. When we wrote together in the early days, it was like the beginning of a relationship. Lots of energy. In the 'Sgt. Pepper'- 'Abbey Road' period, the relationship had matured. Maybe had we gone on together, more interesting things would have come, but it couldn't have been the same."

PLAYBOY: "Let's move on to Ringo. What's your opinion of him musically?"

LENNON: "Ringo was a star in his own right in Liverpool before we even met. He was a professional drummer who sang and performed and had Ringo Starr-time and he was in one of the top groups in Britain but especially in Liverpool before we even had a drummer. So Ringo's talent would have come out one way or the other as something or other. I don't know what he would have ended up as, but whatever that spark is in Ringo that we all know but can't put our finger on... whether it is acting, drumming or singing I don't know... there is something in him that is projectable and he would have surfaced with or without the Beatles. Ringo is a damn good drummer. He is not technically good, but I think Ringo's drumming is underrated the same way Paul's bass playing is underrated. Paul was one of the most innovative bass players ever. And half the stuff that is going on now is directly ripped off from his Beatles period. He is an egomaniac about everything else about himself, but his bass playing he was always a bit coy about. I think Paul and Ringo stand up with any of the rock musicians. Not technically great... none of us are technical musicians. None of us could read music. None of us can write it. But as pure musicians, as inspired humans to make the noise, they are as good as anybody."

PLAYBOY: "How about George's solo music?"

LENNON: "I think 'All Things Must Pass' was all right. It just went on too long."

PLAYBOY: "How did you feel about the lawsuit George lost that claimed the music to 'My Sweet Lord' is a rip-off of the Shirelles' hit 'He's So Fine?'"

LENNON: "Well, he walked right into it. He knew what he was doing."

PLAYBOY: "Are you saying he consciously plagiarized the song?"

LENNON: "He must have known, you know. He's smarter than that. It's irrelevant, actually... only on a monetary level does it matter. He could have changed a couple of bars in that song and nobody could ever have touched him, but he just let it go and paid the price. Maybe he thought God would just sort of let him off."

(At presstime, the court has found Harrison guilty of 'subconscious' plagiarism but has not yet ruled on damages.)

PLAYBOY: "You actually haven't mentioned George much in this interview."

LENNON: "Well, I was hurt by George's book, 'I, Me, Mine' ...so this message will go to him. He put a book out privately on his life that, by glaring omission, says that my influence on his life is absolutely zilch and nil. In his book, which is purportedly this clarity of vision of his influence on each song he wrote, he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I'm not in the book."

PLAYBOY: "Why?"

LENNON: "Because George's relationship with me was one of young follower and older guy. He's three or four years younger than me. It's a love/hate relationship and I think George still bears resentment toward me for being a daddy who left home. He would not agree with this, but that's my feeling about it. I was just hurt. I was just left out, as if I didn't exist. I don't want to be that egomaniacal, but he was like a disciple of mine when we started. I was already an art student when Paul and George were still in grammar school." (equivalent to high school in the U.S.) "There is a vast difference between being in high school and being in college and I was already in college and already had sexual relationships, already drank and did a lot of things like that. When George was a kid, he used to follow me and my first girlfriend, Cynthia.. who became my wife... around. We'd come out of art school and he'd be hovering around like those kids at the gate of the Dakota now. I remember the day he called to ask for help on 'Taxman,' one of his bigger songs. I threw in a few one-liners to help the song along, because that's what he asked for. He came to me because he couldn't go to Paul, because Paul wouldn't have helped him at that period. I didn't want to do it. I thought, Oh, no, don't tell me I have to work on George's stuff. It's enough doing my own and Paul's. But because I loved him and I didn't want to hurt him when he called me that afternoon and said, 'Will you help me with this song?' I just sort of bit my tongue and said OK. It had been John and Paul so long, he'd been left out because he hadn't been a songwriter up until then. As a singer, we allowed him only one track on each album. If you listen to the Beatles' first albums, the English versions, he gets a single track. The songs he and Ringo sang at first were the songs that used to be part of my repertoire in the dance halls. I used to pick songs for them from my repertoire... the easier ones to sing. So I am slightly resentful of George's book. But don't get me wrong. I still love those guys. The Beatles are over, but John, Paul, George and Ringo go on."

PLAYBOY: "Didn't all four Beatles work on a song you wrote for Ringo in 1973?"

LENNON: "'I'm the Greatest.' It was the Muhammad Ali line, of course. It was perfect for Ringo to sing. If I said, 'I'm the greatest,' they'd all take it so seriously. No one would get upset with Ringo singing it."

PLAYBOY: "Did you enjoy playing with George and Ringo again?"

LENNON: "Yeah, except when George and Billy Preston started saying, 'Let's form a group. Let's form a group.' I was embarrassed when George kept asking me. He was just enjoying the session and the spirit was very good, but I was with Yoko, you know. We took time out from what we were doing. The very fact that they would imagine I would form a male group without Yoko! It was still in their minds..."

PLAYBOY: "Just to finish your favorite subject, what about the suggestion that the four of you put aside your personal feelings and regroup to give a mammoth concert for charity, some sort of giant benefit?"

LENNON: "I don't want to have anything to do with benefits. I have been benefited to death."

PLAYBOY: "Why?"

LENNON: "Because they're always rip-offs. I haven't performed for personal gain since 1966, when the Beatles last performed. Every concert since then, Yoko and I did for specific charities, except for a Toronto thing that was a rock 'n roll revival. Every one of them was a mess or a rip-off. So now we give money to who we want. You've heard of tithing?"

PLAYBOY: "That's when you give away a fixed percentage of your income."

LENNON: "Right. I am just going to do it privately. I am not going to get locked into that business of saving the world on stage. The show is always a mess and the artist always comes off badly." (To be continued next week, featuring Part 2 of 3)

Please feel free to leave any comments or corrections and share these articles plus the blog's website with your friends, especially Beatles’ fans. You and they might also enjoy knowing more about my Love Songs CD and my novel, BEATLEMANIAC. Just click on the “My Shop” tab near the top of this page for full details.

The Beatles First Ever Radio Interview, November 28, 1962

According to renown Beatles author Mark Lewisohn, this is the Beatles' first-ever radio interview. Lewisohn accurately describes it as rare and fascinating, not just for historical importance, but also because it's wonderfully intriguing. The following ordeal was interviewed by Monty Lister, with additional questions from Malcolm Threadgill and Peter Smethurst on behalf of Radio Clatterbridge, a closed-circuit radio station serving Cleaver and Clatterbridge Hospitals. Enjoy.

MONTY: It's a very great pleasure for us this evening to say hello to an up-and-coming Merseyside group, The Beatles. I know their names, and I'm going to try and put faces to them. Now, you're John Lennon, aren't you?"

JOHN: "Yes, that's right."

MONTY: "What do you do in the group, John?"

JOHN: "I play harmonica, rhythm guitar, and vocal. That's what they call it."

MONTY: "Then, there's Paul McCartney. That's you?"

PAUL: "Yeah, that's me. Yeah."

MONTY: "And what do you do?"

PAUL: "Play bass guitar and uhh, sing? ...I think! That's what they say."

MONTY: "That's quite apart from being vocal?"

PAUL: "Well... yes, yes."

MONTY: "Then there's George Harrison."

GEORGE: "How d'you do."

MONTY: "How d'you do. What's your job?"

GEORGE: "Uhh, lead guitar and sort of singing."

MONTY: "By playing lead guitar does that mean that you're sort of leader of the group or are you...?"

GEORGE: "No, no. Just... Well you see, the other guitar is the rhythm. Ching, ching, ching, you see."

PAUL: "He's solo guitar, you see. John is, in fact, the leader of the group."

MONTY: "And over in the background, here, and also in the background of the group making a lot of noise is Ringo Starr."

RINGO: "Hello."

MONTY: "You're new to the group, aren't you Ringo?"

RINGO: "Yes, umm, nine weeks now."

MONTY: "Were you in on the act when the recording was made of 'Love Me Do'?"

RINGO: "Yes, I'm on the record. I'm on the disc."

(the group giggles)

RINGO: (comic voice) "It's down on record, you know?"

MONTY: "Now, umm..."

RINGO: "I'm the drummer!"

(laughter)

MONTY: "What's that offensive weapon you've got there? Those are your drumsticks?"

RINGO: "Well, it's umm... just a pair of sticks I found. I just bought 'em, you know, 'cuz we're going away."

MONTY: "When you say you're going away, that leads us on to another question now. Where are you going?"

RINGO: "Germany. Hamburg. For two weeks."

MONTY: "You have standing and great engagements over there, haven't you?"

RINGO: "Well, the boys have been there quite a lot, you know. And I've been there with other groups, but this is the first time I've been there with the Beatles."

MONTY: "Paul, tell us. How do you get in on the act in Germany?"

PAUL: "Well, it was all through an old agent."

(laughter)

PAUL: (chuckles) "We first went there for a fella who used to manage us, and Mr. Allan Williams of the Jacaranda Club in Liverpool. And he found the engagements, so we sort of went there, and then went under our own..."

JOHN: "Steam."

PAUL: "Steam... (laughs)

JOHN: "...as they say."

PAUL: "As they say, afterwards, you know. And we've just been going backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards."

MONTY: (surprised) "You're not busy at all?"

PAUL: (jokingly) "Well yes, actually. Yes. It's me left leg. You know. The war."

(laughter)

MONTY: "George, were you brought up in Liverpool?"

GEORGE: "Yes. So far, yes."

MONTY: "Whereabouts?"

GEORGE: "Well, born in Wavertree, and bred in Wavertree and Speke -- where the airplanes are, you know."

MONTY: "Are you all 'Liverpool types,' then?"

RINGO: "Yes."

JOHN: "Uhh... types, yes."

PAUL: "Oh yeah."

RINGO: "Liverpool-typed Paul, there."

MONTY: "Now, I'm told that you were actually in the same form as young Ron Wycherley..."

RINGO: "Ronald. Yes."

MONTY: "...now Billy Fury."

RINGO: "In Saint Sylus."

MONTY: "In which?"

RINGO: "Saint Sylus."

JOHN: "Really?"

RINGO: "It wasn't Dingle Vale like you said in the Musical Express."

PAUL: "No, that was wrong. Saint Sylus school."

MONTY: "Now I'd like to introduce a young disc jockey. His name is Malcolm Threadgill, he's 16-years old, and I'm sure he'd like to ask some questions from the teenage point of view."

MALCOLM: "I understand you've made other recordings before on a German label."

PAUL: "Yeah."

MALCOLM: "What ones were they?"

PAUL: "Well, we didn't make... First of all, we made a recording with a fella called Tony Sheridan. We were working in a club called 'The Top Ten Club' in Hamburg. And we made a recording with him called, 'My Bonnie,' which got to number five in the German Hit Parade."

JOHN: "Ach tung!"

PAUL: (giggles) "But it didn't do a thing over here, you know. It wasn't a very good record, but the Germans must've liked it a bit. And we did an instrumental which was released in France on an EP of Tony Sheridan's, which George and John wrote themselves. That wasn't released here. It got one copy. That's all, you know. It didn't do anything."

MALCOLM: "You composed 'P.S. I Love You' and 'Love Me Do' yourself, didn't you? Who does the composing between you?"

PAUL: "Well, it's John and I. We write the songs between us. It's, you know... We've sort of signed contracts and things to say, that now if we..."

JOHN: "It's equal shares."

PAUL: "Yeah, equal shares and royalties and things, so that really we just both write most of the stuff. George did write this instrumental, as we say. But mainly it's John and I. We've written over about a hundred songs, but we don't use half of them, you know. We just happened to sort of rearrange 'Love Me Do' and played it to the recording people, and 'P.S. I Love You,' and uhh, they seemed to quite like it. So that's what we recorded."

MALCOLM: "Is there any more of your own compositions you intend to record?"

JOHN: "Well, we did record another song of our own when we were down there, but it wasn't finished enough. So, you know, we'll take it back next time and see how they like it then."

(long pause)

JOHN: (jokingly) "Well... that's all from MY end!"

(laughter)

MONTY: "I would like to just ask you-- and we're recording this at Hume Hall, Port Sunlight-- Did any of you come over to this side before you became famous, as it were? Do you know this district?"

PAUL: "Well, we played here, uhh... I don't know what you mean by famous, you know.

(laughter)

PAUL: "If being famous is being in the Hit Parade, we've been over here-- we were here about two months ago. Been here twice, haven't we?"

JOHN: "I've got relations here. Rock Ferry."

MONTY: "Have you?"

JOHN: "Yes. Oh, all sides of the water, you know."

PAUL: "Yeah, I've got a relation in Claughton Village-- Upton Road."

RINGO: (jokingly) "I've got a friend in Birkenhead!"

(laughter)

MONTY: "I wish I had."

GEORGE: (jokingly) "I know a man in Chester!"

(laughter)

MONTY: "Now, that's a very dangerous thing to say. There's a mental home there, mate. Peter Smethurst is here as well, and he looks like he is bursting with a question."

PETER: "There is just one question I'd like to ask. I'm sure it's the question everyone's asking. I'd like your impressions on your first appearance on television."

PAUL: "Well, strangely enough, we thought we were gonna be dead nervous. And everyone said, 'You suddenly when you see the cameras, you realize that there are two million people watching,' because there were two million watching that 'People And Places' that we did... we heard afterwards. But, strangely enough, it didn't come to us. We didn't think at all about that. And it was much easier doing the television than it was doing the (live musical performance) radio. It's still nerve-wracking, but it was a bit easier than doing radio because there was a full audience for the radio broadcast."

MONTY: "Do you find it nerve-wracking doing this now?"

(laughter)

PAUL: (jokingly) "Yeah, yeah."

MONTY: "Over at Cleaver Hospital, a certain record on Parlophone-- the top side has been requested. So perhaps the Beatles themselves would like to tell them what it's going to be."

PAUL: "Yeah. Well, I think it's gonna be 'Love Me Do.'"

JOHN: "Parlophone R4949."

(laughter)

PAUL: "'Love Me Do.'"

MONTY: "And I'm sure, for them, the answer is P.S. I love you!"

PAUL: "Yeah." (And as the music faded, that was the end of the end of the broadcast.

Eight Months Later, a lot had happened, and on August 23rd, 1963, Klas Burling interviewed the Beatles following their performance in Bournemouth, Hampshire. The Fab Four were in the midst of a six-night engagement in at Bournemouth's Gaumont Cinema. This day, discussions lean toward the excitement releasing a brand new hot single.

KLAS: "On my left is a boy... sounding like what?"

RINGO: "Uhh, Ringo. That's me. You know me. (imitates drums) Ting-cha, bump bah-bump!"

KLAS: "This would be the drums."

RINGO: "Yeah, that's... Well..."

KLAS: "Well.."

(Beatles giggle)

KLAS: "And after that, we've got..?"

GEORGE: "George Harrison."

KLAS: "Playing..?"

GEORGE: "Guitar."

KLAS: "Solo guitar."

GEORGE: "Yes. (imitates guitar) Dee deena-lee, deena-lee dee dee."

(laughter)

KLAS: "Next in line is..?"

JOHN: (imitates guitar) "Ja-jing jing jing, ja-ja jing jing."

(laughter)

JOHN: "John."

RINGO: "Lennon."

JOHN: "Rhythmus."

(Beatles giggle)

KLAS: "And on my right side is..?"

PAUL: (imitates bass) "boom bah-boom boom, bah-boom boom. Paul McCartney."

KLAS: "All from Liverpool, known as..?"

PAUL & JOHN: "The Beatles."

KLAS: "Yeah, that's right. You've had some hits in Sweden, and have you ever thought about coming to Sweden?"

RINGO: "Well, we'd like to, you know. But we're so busy at the moment. I don't think we'll get there until sometime next year if we go at all."

PAUL: "Actually, you know, we want to come because we've heard about the girls in Sweden. All gorgeous blondes. you know."

GEORGE & JOHN: "Yeah."

KLAS: "That's Paul, and he's supposed to be the sweet boy in this family, no?"

PAUL: (jokingly) "Aww, shuttup."

(laughter)

JOHN: "His dad was a Mars bar."

PAUL: (laughs)

KLAS: "And George, you would like to go..."

GEORGE: "I would like to go to Sweden, yes."

KLAS: "By the side, by the way, is Michael Cox. An old friend of yours..."

RINGO: "Yeah...!"

JOHN: (loudly) "Hello, Michael Cox!"

PAUL: "He's from Liverpool, too."

GEORGE: "How is he?"

MICHAEL COX: "Fine, fine."

KLAS: "And he has told you a lot about Sweden, and so on."

GEORGE: "Yes."

KLAS: "You're still interested?"

BEATLES: "Yeah!"

RINGO: "More than ever."

KLAS: "After this, we'll get to your recording of 'Twist And Shout.' I watched you, and John you are singing..."

JOHN: "Shouting it."

KLAS: "Yeah, you're shouting it, really. How do you feel from that... the throat?"

JOHN: "Well, um, at first it was hard. But when I do it twice a night, it's easy." (imitates dog barking)

(laughter)

JOHN: (giggling) "It's quite easy now. Practice, you know, if I keep shouting every night. But a year ago I couldn't sing it."

KLAS: "And another thing in your stage act, John, is all that SICK humor. You've got funny hands, and..."

JOHN: "Well, I thought it was quite healthy."

KLAS: (laughs)

RINGO: "It's not sick. He's just a cripple."

(laughter)

JOHN: (giggling) "I'm not, I'm not!"

(laughter)

JOHN: "I'm quite normal, my Swedish friends."

(laughter, the Beatles recording of 'Twist And Shout' is played)

KLAS: "The songwriters in the Beatles, they are John Lennon and Paul McCartney."

JOHN: (monotone) "Hurray."

KLAS: "Tell us something about how you find a song... how you get the idea about a song, to write it down."

JOHN: "Well, sometimes it's the words first, and then the music after."

KLAS: "Very often you've got a title, you know... Me and you, and everything like that?"

PAUL: "Yeah. We try to do that, to make it personal so it's... so we really mean it. When we sing a thing about 'I love you,' it's easier."

JOHN: (singing) "'And don't you forget it!'"

JOHN & PAUL: (singing together, jokingly) "'I love you and don't you forget it!'"

PAUL: "Well, you see, it's easier than singing something about the cat that lives on the hill, man."

(laughter)

PAUL: "It's a lot easier just to sing about what you feel yourself."

KLAS: "And you've given a lot of nice numbers to Billy J. Kramer."

JOHN: (loudly) "Well, he's our good friend and mate... buddy... pal... friend."

PAUL: "Yeah. Listen to 'Bad To Me,' folks."

KLAS: "Your latest recording is called..?

PAUL: "It's called 'She Loves You.' And there's story to this one, how we wrote it. We were on tour with Roy Orbison, and Gerry and the Pacemakers. And we were in Newcastle, up north of England, and we were in a hotel room. We had about three days left in which to write a song. We had a recording date set for three days from this date. So we went to the hotel, and we booked in a room, and we just decided that we have to write a song very quickly. So, we sat down, no ideas came for a bit. But eventually, we got an idea. 'She Loves You' came, you know. It was just lucky."

KLAS: "But from the start that was supposed to be the B-side, John?"

JOHN: "The B-side of 'She Loves You' was meant to be the A-side. And the same for 'From Me To you.' The B-Side of 'From Me To You' was the A-side, and then we wrote another song after."

KLAS: "Well, it..."

JOHN: "Came out better."

PAUL: "Yeah, see, we write one song, then we can get going then after that and get more ideas after having written one song. So, we wrote 'I'll Get You' which is the B-side, first. And then 'She Loves You' came after that, you know. We got ideas from that, and we recorded it."

KLAS: "Yes."

PAUL: "And there ya go."

KLAS: "It sounds very easy, all of it."

JOHN: "Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it's hard."

RINGO: (jokingly) "We find it difficult sometimes!"

(laughter)

KLAS: (jokingly) "Thanks, Ringo."

(John and Paul giggle)

KLAS: "Well, singing too. All of you. You're singing, actually."

PAUL: "Yeah, we all sing."

JOHN: "The Singing Dogs."

RINGO: "You know me... 'Boys.'"

(Beatles laugh)

PAUL: "We've written a new song for Ringo which we are gonna do on our new LP."

KLAS: "Yes, what about that new LP? When?"

JOHN: "It's September, isn't it?"

PAUL: "No, it's November."

JOHN: (jokingly perturbed at being corrected) "Okay, okay!"

(laughter)

PAUL: "Don't know when it'll get to Sweden, though, but we hope it'll get there in November. (nasal voice) And we hope it sells!"

KLAS: "Alright."

PAUL: "That's all I can say."

KLAS: "Alright. RIght now, we'll listen to 'She Loves You.'"

(Beatles yell 'Hurray!' and applaud)

PAUL: "More!"

RINGO: "Play it twice."

('She Loves You' is played) Followed by closing music which ends the program.

Please feel free to leave any comments or corrections and share these articles plus the blog's website with your friends, especially Beatles’ fans. You and they might also enjoy knowing more about my Love Songs CD and my novel, BEATLEMANIAC. Just click on the “My Shop” tab near the top of this page for full details.

The Playboy Interview, But Not The One You’re Thinking Of!

Surely by now, most of you Beatles fans should recall Playboy Magazine presented a spectacular interview, excitable for the curious, with a riveting discussion between reporter David Sheff alongside non-other than John & Yoko. Sheff conducted a marvelous what’s-been-going-on-chat that took place in September 1980, held for print until the Journal’s January 1981 edition. However, did you know fifteen years earlier, Playboy presented another published “Playboy Interview” which included all four of the famous Liverpool Lads? It’s true. Playboys’ February 1965 issue featured a fine, filled with amusing frolic, Q & A performance led by Jean Shepherd, master of humor on talk radio and television, the same man Jerry Seinfeld says, “He really formed my entire comedic sensibility. I learned how to do comedy from Jean Shepherd.” So, without further delay, enjoy the lengthy, sometimes a bit racy fun. . .    

PLAYBOY: "OK, we're on. Why don't we begin by..."

JOHN: "Doing Hamlet."

(laughter)

RINGO: "Yeah, yeah, let's do that."

PLAYBOY: "That sounds fun, but just for laughs, why don't we do an interview instead?"

GEORGE: "Say, that's a fine idea. I wish I'd thought of that."

PAUL: "What shall we ask you for a first question?"

RINGO: "About those Bunny girls..."

PLAYBOY: "No comment. Let's start over. Ringo, you're the last Beatle to join the group, aren't you?"

RINGO: "Yes."

JOHN: "A few years probably... sort of off and on, really... for three years or so."

PAUL: "Yeah, but really amateur."

GEORGE: "The local pub, you know. And in each other's uncle's houses."

JOHN: "And at George's brother's wedding. Things like that. Ringo used to fill in sometimes if our drummer was ill. With his periodic illness."

RINGO: "He took little pills to make him ill."

PLAYBOY: "When you joined the others, Ringo, they weren't quite as big as they are now, were they?"

RINGO: "They were the biggest thing in Liverpool. In them days that was big enough."

PAUL: "This is a point we've made before. Some people say a man is made of muscle and blood... No they don't... they say, 'How come you've suddenly been able to adjust to fame,' you know, to nationwide fame and things. It all started quite nicely with us, you see, in our own sphere where we used to play, in Liverpool. We never used to play outside it, except when we went to Hamburg. Just those two circles. And in each of them, I think we were 'round the highest paid, and probably at the time the most popular. So in actual fact, we had the same feeling of being famous then as we do now."

GEORGE: "We were recognized then, too, only people didn't chase us about."

PAUL: "But it just grew. The quantity grew; not the quality of the feeling."

PLAYBOY: "When did you know that you had really hit it big? There must have been one night when you knew it really had begun."

JOHN: "Well, we'd been playing 'round in Liverpool for a bit without getting anywhere, trying to get work, and the other groups kept telling us, 'You'll do alright, you'll get work someday.' And then we went back to Hamburg, and when we came back, suddenly we were a 'Wow.' Mind you, 70 percent of the audience thought we were a 'German Wow,' but we didn't care about that."

PAUL: "We were billed in the paper: 'From Hamburg-- The Beatles.'"

JOHN: "In Liverpool, people didn't even know we were from Liverpool. They thought we were from Hamburg. They said, 'Christ, they speak good English!' Which we did, of course, being English. But that's when we first, you know, stood there being cheered for the first time."

PAUL: "That was when we felt we were..."

JOHN: "...on the way up."

PAUL: "...gonna make it in Liverpool."

PLAYBOY: "How much were you earning then?"

JOHN: "For that particular night, 20 dollars."

PLAYBOY: "Apiece?"

JOHN: "For the group! Hell, we used to work for less than that."

PAUL: "We used to work for about three or four dollars a night."

RINGO: "Plus all the Coke we could drink. And we drank a lot."

PLAYBOY: "Do you remember the first journalist who came to see you and said, 'I want to write about you'?"

RINGO "We went 'round to them at first, didn't we?"

JOHN: "We went and said, 'We're a group, and we've got this record out. Will you...'"

GEORGE: "And the door would slam."

PLAYBOY: "We've heard it said that when you first went to America, you were doubtful that you'd make it over there."

JOHN: "That's true. We didn't think we were going to make it at all. It was only Brian telling us we were gonna make it. Brian Epstein our manager, and George Harrison."

GEORGE: "I knew we had a good chance... because of the record sales over there."

JOHN: "The thing is, in America, it just seemed ridiculous... I mean, the idea of having a hit record over there. It was just, you know, something you could never do. That's what I thought anyhow. But then I realized that it's just the same as here, that kids everywhere all go for the same stuff. And seeing we'd done it in England and all, there's no reason why we couldn't do it in America, too. But the American disc jockeys didn't know about British records; they didn't play them; nobody promoted them, and so you didn't have hits."

GEORGE: "Well, there were one or two doing it as a novelty."

JOHN: "But it wasn't until 'Time' and "Life' and "Newsweek' came over and wrote articles and created an interest in us that American disc jockeys started playing our records. And Capitol said, 'Well, can we have their records?' You know, they had been offered our records years ago, and they didn't want them. But when they heard we were big over here they said, 'Can we have 'em now?' So we said, 'As long as you promote them.' So Capitol promoted, and with them and all these articles on us, the records just took off."

PLAYBOY: "There's been some dispute among your fans and critics, about whether you're primarily entertainers or musicians... or perhaps neither. What's your own opinion?"

JOHN: "We're money-makers first; then we're entertainers."

RINGO: "No, we're not."

JOHN: "What are we, then?"

RINGO: "Dunno. Entertainers first."

JOHN: "OK."

RINGO: "'Cuz we were entertainers before we were money-makers."

JOHN: "That's right, of course. It's just that the press drivels it into you, so you say it 'cuz they like to hear it, you know."

PAUL: "Still, we'd be idiots to say that it isn't a constant inspiration to be making a lot of money. It always is, to anyone. I mean, why do big business tycoons stay big business tycoons? It's not because they're inspired at the greatness of big business; they're in it because they're making a lot of money at it. We'd be idiots if we pretended we were in it solely for kicks. In the beginning, we were, but at the same time, we were hoping to make a bit of cash. It's a switch around now, though, from what it used to be. We used to be doing it mainly for kicks and not making a lot of money, and now we're making a lot of money without too many kicks... except that we happen to like the money we're making. But we still enjoy making records, going on-stage, making films, and all that business."

JOHN: "We love every minute of it, Beatle people!"

PLAYBOY: "As hard-bitten refugees from the Liverpool slums-- according to heart-rending fan magazine biographies-- do you feel prepared to cope with all this sudden wealth?"

PAUL: "We've managed to make the adjustment. Contrary to rumor, you see, none of us was brought up in any slums or in great degrees of poverty. We've always had enough; we've never been starving."

JOHN: "Yeah, we saw those articles in the American fan mags that said, 'Those boys struggled up from the slums..."

GEORGE: "We never starved. Even Ringo hasn't."

RINGO: "Even I."

PLAYBOY: "What kind of families do you come from?"

GEORGE: "Well, you know, not rich. Just workin' class. They've got jobs... just work."

PLAYBOY: "What does your father do?"

GEORGE: "Well, he doesn't do anything now. He used to be a bus driver..."

JOHN: "In the Merchant Navy."

PLAYBOY: "Do you have any brothers or sisters, George?"

GEORGE: "I've got two brothers."

JOHN: "And no sisters to speak of."

PLAYBOY: "How about you, Paul?"

PAUL: "I've got one brother, and a father who used to be a cotton salesman down in New Orleans, you know. That's probably why I look a bit tanned... But seriously folks.... he occasionally had trouble paying the bills, but it was never, you know, never 'Go out and pick blackberries, son; we're a bit short this week.'"

PLAYBOY: "How about you, John?"

JOHN: "Oh, just the same. I used to have an auntie. And I had a dad whom I couldn't quite find."

RINGO: "John lived with the Mounties."

JOHN: "Yeah, the Mounties. They fed me well. No starvation."

PLAYBOY: "How about your family, Ringo, old man?"

RINGO: "Just workin' class. I was brought up with my mother and me grandparents. And then she married me stepfather when I was 13. All the time she was working. I never starved. I used to get most things."

GEORGE: "Never starved?"

RINGO: "No. I never starved. She always fed me. I was an only child, so it wasn't amazing."

PLAYBOY: "It's quite fashionable in some circles in America to hate your parents. But none of you seem to."

RINGO: "We're probably just as against the things our parents liked or stood for as they are in America. But we don't hate our parents for it."

PLAYBOY: "It's often exactly the opposite in America."

PAUL: "Well, you know, a lot of Americans are unbalanced. I don't care what you say. No, really. A lot of them are quite normal, of course, but we've met many unbalanced ones. You know the type of person, like the political Whig."

PLAYBOY: "How do you mean?"

PAUL: "You know... the professional political type; in authority sort of thing. Some of them are just mad! And I've met some really maniac American girls! Like this one girl who walked up to me in a press conference and said, 'I'm Lily.' I said, 'Hello, how do you do?' and she said, 'Doesn't my name mean anything to you?' I said, 'Ah, no...' and I thought, 'Oh god, it's one of these people that you've met, and you should know.' And so Derek, our press agent, who happened to be there at the time, hanging over my shoulder, giving me quotes, which happens at every press conference..."

GEORGE: "You'd better not say that."

PAUL: "Oh yes, that's not true, Beatle people! But he was sort of hanging about, and he said, 'Well did you ring, or did you write, or something?' And she said, 'No.' And he said, 'Well, how did you get in touch with Paul? How do you know him?' And she said, 'Through God.' Well, there was sort of a ghastly silence. I mean, we both sort of gulped and blushed. I said, 'Well, that's very nice, Lily. Thanks very much. I must be off now.'"

PLAYBOY: "There wasn't a big lightning bolt from the sky?"

PAUL: "No, there wasn't. But I talked to her afterward, and she said she'd got a vision from God, and God had said to her..."

JOHN: "It's been a hard day's night."

(laughter)

PAUL: "No, God had said, 'Listen, Lil, Paul is waiting for you; he's in love with you, and he wants to marry you, so go down and meet him, and he'll know you right away. It's very funny, you know. I was trying to persuade her that she didn't in actual fact have a vision from God, that it was..."

GEORGE: "It was probably somebody disguised as God."

PAUL: "You wouldn't hardly ever meet somebody like that in England, but there seemed to be a lot like her in America."

JOHN: "Well, there's a lot of people in America, so you've got a much bigger group to get nutters from."

PLAYBOY: "Speaking of nutters, do you ever wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, 'My god, I'm a Beatle?'"

PAUL: "No, not quite."

(laughter)

JOHN: "Actually, we only do it in each other's company. I know I never do it alone."

RINGO: "We used to do it more. We'd get in the car. I'd look over at John and say, 'Christ, look at you; you're a bloody phenomenon!' and just laugh... 'cuz it was only him, you know. And a few old friends of ours done it, from Liverpool. I'd catch 'em looking at me, and I'd say, 'What's the matter with you?' It's just daft, them just screaming and laughing, thinking I'm one of them, people."

PLAYBOY: "A Beatle?"

RINGO: "Yes."

PAUL: "The thing that makes me know we've made it is like tonight when we slipped into a sweetshop. In the old days, we could have just walked into a sweetshop, and nobody would have noticed us. We would have just got our sweets and gone out. But tonight, we just walked in... it took a couple of seconds... and the people there just dropped their sweets. Before, you see, there would have been no reaction at all. Except possibly, 'Look at that fellow with the long hair. Doesn't he look daft?' But nowadays they're just amazed; they can't believe it. But actually, we're no different."

PLAYBOY: "The problem is that you don't seem to be like real people. You're Beatles."

PAUL: "I know. It's funny, that."

GEORGE: "It's all the publicity."

PAUL: "We're taken in by it too. Because we react exactly the same way to the stars, we meet. When we meet people we've seen on the telly or in films, we still think, 'Wow!'"

JOHN: "It's a good thing because we get just as tickled."

PAUL: "The thing is that people, when they see you on TV and in magazines and up in a film, and hear you on the radio, they never expect to meet you, you know, even our fans. Their wish is to meet you, but in the back of their mind, they never think they're actually gonna meet us. And so, when they do meet us, they just don't believe it."

PLAYBOY: "Where do they find you-- hiding in your hotel rooms?"

JOHN: "No, on the street usually."

PLAYBOY: "You mean you're brave enough to venture out into the streets without a bodyguard?"

RINGO: "Sure."

GEORGE: "We're always on the street. Staggering about."

RINGO: "Flogging our bodies."

GEORGE: "You catch John sleeping in the gutter occasionally."

PLAYBOY: "When people see you in the street, do you ever have any action?"

GEORGE: "Well, not really, because when you're walking about, you don't bump into groups of people as a rule. People don't walk 'round in gangs, as a rule."

PLAYBOY: "Can you even go out shopping without getting mobbed by them, individually or collectively?"

JOHN: "We avoid that."

PAUL: "The mountain comes to Mohammed."

GEORGE: "The shop comes to us, as he says. But sometimes we just roll into a store and buy stuff and leg out again."

PLAYBOY: "Isn't that like looking for trouble?"

PAUL: "No, we walk four times faster than the average person."

PLAYBOY: "Can you eat safely in restaurants?"

GEORGE: "Sure we can. I was there the other night."

JOHN: "Where?"

GEORGE: "Restaurants."

PAUL: "Of course we're known in the restaurants we go in."

GEORGE: "And usually it's only Americans that'll bother you."

PLAYBOY: "Really?"

GEORGE: "Really. If we go into a restaurant in London, there's always going to be a couple of them eating there; you just tell the waiter to hold them off if they try to come over. If they come over anyway, you just sign."

RINGO: "But you know, the restaurants I go to, probably if I wasn't famous I wouldn't go to them. Even if I had the same money and wasn't famous, I wouldn't go to them because the people that go to them are drags. The good thing when you go to a place where the people are such drags, such snobs, you see, is that they won't bother to come over to your table. They pretend they don't even know who you are, and you get away with an easy night."

GEORGE: "And they think they are laughing at us, but really we're laughing at them... 'cuz we know they know who we are."

RINGO: "How's that?"

GEORGE: "They're not going to be like the rest and ask for autographs."

RINGO: "And if they do, we just swear at them."

GEORGE: "Well, I don't, Beatle people. I sign the autograph and thank them profusely for coming over, and offer them a piece of my chop."

JOHN: "If we're in the middle of a meal, I usually say, 'Do you mind waiting till I'm finished?'"

GEORGE: "And then we keep eating until they give up and leave."

JOHN: "That's not true, Beatle people!"

PLAYBOY: "Apart from these occupational hazards, are you happy in your work? Do you really enjoy getting pelted by jellybeans and being drowned out by thousands of screaming sub-teenagers?"

RINGO: "Yes."

GEORGE: "We still find it exciting."

JOHN: "Well, you know..."

PAUL: "After a while, actually, you begin to get used to it, you know."

PLAYBOY: "Can you really get used to this?"

PAUL: "Well, you still get excited when you go onto a stage, and the audience is great, you know. But obviously, you're not as excited as you were when you first heard that one of your records had reached number one. I mean, you really do go wild with excitement then; you go out drinking and celebrating and things."

RINGO: "Now we just go out drinkin' anyway."

PLAYBOY: "Do you stick pretty much together off-stage?"

JOHN: "Well, yes and no. Groups like this are normally not friends, you know. They're just four people out there thrown together to make an act. There may be two of them who sort of go off and are friends, you know, but..."

GEORGE: "Just what do you mean by that?"

JOHN: "Strictly platonic, of course. But we're all rather good friends, as it happens."

PLAYBOY: "Then do you see a good deal of one another when you're not working?"

PAUL: "Well, you know, it depends. We needn't always go to the same places together. In earlier days, of course, when we didn't know London, and we didn't know anybody in London, then we really did stick together, and it would really be just like four fellows down from the north for a coach trip. But nowadays, you know, we've got our own girlfriends... they're in London... so that we each normally go out with our girlfriends on our days off. Except for John, of course, who's married."

PLAYBOY: "Do any of the rest of you have any plans to settle down?"

PAUL: "I haven't got any."

GEORGE: "Ringo and I are getting married."

RINGO: "Oh? To whom?"

GEORGE: "To each other. But that's a thing you'd better keep a secret."

RINGO: "You better not tell anybody."

GEORGE: I mean, if we said something like that, people'd probably think we're queers. After all, that's not the sort of thing you can put in a reputable magazine like PLAYBOY. And anyway, we don't want to start the rumor going."

PLAYBOY: "We'd better change the subject, then. Do you remember the other night when this girl came backstage..."

GEORGE: "Naked..."

PLAYBOY: "Unfortunately not. And she said..."

GEORGE: "It's been a hard day's night."

PLAYBOY: "No. She pointed at you, George, and said, 'There's a Beatle!' And you others said, 'That's George.' And she said, 'No, it's a Beatle!'

JOHN: "And you said, 'This way to the bedroom.'"

PLAYBOY: "No, it was, 'Would you like us to introduce you to him?'"

JOHN: "I like my line better."

PLAYBOY: "Well, the point is that she didn't believe that there was such a thing as an actual Beatle 'person.'"

JOHN: "She's right, you know."

PLAYBOY: "Do you run across many like her?"

GEORGE: "Is there any other kind?"

PLAYBOY: "In America, too?"

RINGO: "Everywhere."

PLAYBOY: "With no exceptions?"

JOHN: "In America, you mean?

PLAYBOY: "Yes."

JOHN: "A few."

PAUL: "Yeah, some of those American girls have been great."

JOHN: "Like Joan Baez."

PAUL: "Joan Baez is good, yeah, very good."

JOHN: "She's the only one I like."

GEORGE: "And Jayne Mansfield. PLAYBOY made her."

PAUL: "She's a bit different, isn't she? Different."

RINGO: "She's soft."

GEORGE: "Soft and warm."

PAUL: "Actually, she's a clot."

RINGO: "...says Paul, the god of the Beatles."

PAUL: "I didn't mean it, Beatle People! Actually, I haven't even met her. But you won't print that anyway, of course, because PLAYBOY is very pro-Mansfield. They think she's a rave. But she really is an old bag."

PLAYBOY: "By the way, what are Beatle people?"

JOHN: "It's something they use in the fan mags in America. They all start out, 'Hi there, Beatle people, 'spect you're wondering what the Fab Foursome are doing these days!' Now we use it all the time, too."

PAUL: "It's low-level journalese."

JOHN: "But I mean, you know, there's nothing wrong with that, It's harmless."

PLAYBOY: "Speaking of low-level journalese, there was a comment in one of the London papers the other day that paralleled you guys with Hitler. Seriously! It said that you have the same technique of drawing cheers from the crowd..."

PAUL: "That power isn't so much us being like Hitler; it's that the audiences and the show have got a sort of, you know, Hitler feel about them because the audience will shout when they're told to. That's what the critic was talking about. Actually, that article was one which I really got annoyed about, 'cuz she's never even met us."

PLAYBOY: "She?"

PAUL: "The woman who wrote it. She's never met us, but she was dead against us. Like that Hitler bit. And she said we were very boring people. 'The Boresome Foursome,' she called us. You know, really, this woman was really just shouting her mouth off about us... as people, I mean."

RINGO: "Oh, come on."

PAUL: "No, you come on. I rang up the newspaper, you know, but they wouldn't let me speak to her. In actual fact, they said, 'Well, I'll tell you, the reason we don't give out her phone number is because she never likes to speak to people on the phone because she's got a terrible stutter. So, I never did actually follow it up. Felt sorry for her. But I mean, the cheek of her, writing this damn article about us. And telling everybody how we're starting riots, and how we're such bores... and she's never even met us, mind you! I mean, we could turn around and say the same about her! I could go and thump her!"

GEORGE: "Bastard fascist!"

PLAYBOY: "Ringo..."

RINGO: "Yes, PLAYBOY, sir?"

PLAYBOY: "How do you feel about the press? Has your attitude changed in the last year or so?"

RINGO: "Yes."

PLAYBOY: "In what way?"

RINGO: "I hate 'em more now than I did before."

PLAYBOY: "Did you hear about the riot in Glasgow on the night of your last show there?"

JOHN: "We heard about it after."

PLAYBOY: "Did you know that the next day there was a letter in one of the Glasgow papers that accused you of directly 'inciting' the violence?"

RINGO: "How can they say that about us We don't even wiggle. It's not bloody fair."

GEORGE: "Bastards!"

PAUL: "Glasgow is like Belfast. There'll probably be a bit of a skirmish there, too. But not because of us. It's because people in certain cities just hate the cops more than in other cities."

GEORGE: "Right."

PAUL: "There were ridiculous riots last time we were there... but it wasn't riots for us. The crowd was there for us, but the riots after the show..."

RINGO: "All the drunks come out, out of the pubs."

PAUL: "...it was just beatin' up coppers."

PLAYBOY: "They just used the occasion as a pretext to get at the cops?"

GEORGE: "Yeah."

PAUL: "In Dublin this trip, did you see where the crowd sort of stopped all the traffic? They even pulled a driver out of a bus."

JOHN: "They also called out the fire brigade. We had four fire engines this time."

PLAYBOY: "People were also overturning cars and breaking shop windows. But all this had nothing to do with your show?"

PAUL: "Well, it's vaguely related, I suppose. It's got something to do with us, inasmuch as the crowds happen to be there because of our show."

JOHN: "But nobody who's got a bit of common sense would seriously think that 15-year-old girls are going around smashing shop windows on account of us."

GEORGE: "Certainly not. Those girls are 'eight' years old."

PLAYBOY: "This talk of violence leads to a related question. Do you guys think there'll be a war soon?"

GEORGE: "Yeah. Friday."

RINGO: "I hope not. Not just after we've got our money through the taxes."

JOHN: "The trouble is, if they do start another war, then everybody goes with you."

PLAYBOY: "Do you think the Rolling Stones will be the first to go?"

PAUL: "It won't matter, 'cuz we'll probably be in London or Liverpool at the time, and when they drop the bomb, it'll be in the middle of the city. So we probably won't even know it when it happens."

PLAYBOY: "We brought this up for a reason, fellows. There was an essay not long ago in a very serious commentary magazine, saying that before every major war in this century, there had been a major wave of public hysteria over certain specific entertainers. There was the Irene Castle craze before World War One..."

PAUL: "Oh yes."

GEORGE: "I remember that well."

PLAYBOY: "And then, before World War Two, there was the swing craze with Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw and all the dancing in the aisles. And now you--- before...."

JOHN: "Hold on! It's not our fault!"

PLAYBOY: "We're not saying you may have anything to do with inciting a war..."

PAUL: "Thanks."

PLAYBOY: "But don't you think you may be a symptom of the times, part of an undercurrent that's building up?"

PAUL: "That sort of comparison just falls down when you look at it, really. It's just like saying that this morning a fly landed on my bed and that I looked at my watch and it was eight o'clock, and that therefore every morning at eight o'clock flies land on the bed. It doesn't prove anything just 'cuz it happens a few times."

PLAYBOY: "Let's move on to another observation about you. Did you know that the Duke of Edinburgh was recently quoted as saying that he thought you were on the way out?"

JOHN: "Good luck, Duke."

GEORGE: "No comment. See my manager."

PAUL: "He didn't say it, though. There was a retraction, wasn't there?"

JOHN: "Yeah, we got a telegram. Wonderful news."

PAUL: "We sent one back. Addressed to 'Liz and Phil.'"

PLAYBOY: "Have you ever met the Queen?"

JOHN: "No. She's the only one we haven't met. We've met all the others."

PAUL: "All the mainstays."

PLAYBOY: "Winston Churchill?"

RINGO: "No, not him."

JOHN: "He's a good lad, though."

PLAYBOY: "Would you like to meet him?"

GEORGE:" Not really. Not more than anybody else."

PAUL: "I dunno. Somebody like that you wish you could have met when he was at his peak, you know, and sort of doing things and being great. But there wouldn't be a lot of point now because he's sort of gone into retirement and doesn't do a lot of things anymore."

PLAYBOY: "Is there any celebrity you would like to meet?"

PAUL: "I wouldn't mind meeting Adolf Hitler."

GEROGE: "You could have every room in your house papered."

PLAYBOY: "Would you like to meet Princess Margaret?"

PAUL: "We have."

PLAYBOY: "How do you like her?"

RINGO: " "OK. And Philip's OK, too."

PLAYBOY: "Even after what he supposedly said about you?"

RINGO: "I don't care what he said, I still think he's OK. He didn't say nothing about me personally."

PAUL: "Even if he had said things about us, it doesn't make him worse, you know."

PLAYBOY: "Speaking of royalty..."

PAUL: "Royalty never condemns anything unless it's something that they know everybody else condemns."

RINGO: "If I was royal..."

PAUL: "If I was royal, I would crack long jokes and get a mighty laugh... if I was royal."

GEORGE: "What would 'we' do with Buckingham Palace? Royalty's stupid."

PLAYBOY: "You guys seem to be pretty irreverent characters. Are any of you churchgoers?"

JOHN: "No."

GEORGE: "No."

PAUL: "Not particularly. But we're not anti-religious. We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believe in God."

JOHN: "If you say you don't believe in God, everybody assumes you're anti-religious, and you probably think that's what we mean by that. We're not quite sure 'what' we are, but I know that we're more agnostic than atheistic."

PLAYBOY: "Are you speaking for the group, or just for yourself."

JOHN: "For the group."

GEORGE: "John's our official religious spokesman."

PAUL: "We all feel roughly the same. We're all agnostics."

JOHN: "Most people are, anyway."

RINGO: "It's better to admit it than to be a hypocrite."

JOHN: "The only thing we've got against religion is the hypocritical side of it, which I can't stand. Like the clergy is always moaning about people being poor, while they themselves are all going around with millions of quid worth of robes on. That's the stuff I can't stand."

PAUL: "A new bronze door stuck on the Vatican."

RINGO: "Must have cost a mighty penny."

PAUL: "But believe it or not, we're not anti-Christ."

RINGO: "Just anti-Pope and anti-Christian."

PAUL: "But you know, in America..."

GEORGE: "They were more shocked by us saying we were agnostics."

JOHN: "Then they went potty; they couldn't take it. Same as in Australia, where they couldn't stand us not liking sports."

PAUL: "In America, they're fanatical about God. I know somebody over there who said he was an atheist. The papers nearly refused to print it because it was such shocking news that somebody could actually be an atheist... yeah... and admit it."

RINGO: "He speaks for all of us."

PLAYBOY: "To bring up another topic that's shocking to some, how do you feel about the homosexual problem?"

GEORGE: "Oh yeah, well, we're all homosexuals, too."

RINGO: "Yeah, we're all queer."

PAUL: "But don't tell anyone."

PLAYBOY: "Seriously, is there more homosexuality in England than elsewhere?"

JOHN: "Are you saying there's more over here than in America?"

PLAYBOY: "We're just asking."

GEORGE: "It's just that they've got crewcuts in America. You can't spot 'em."

PAUL: "There's probably a million more queers in America than in England. England may have its scandals... like Profumo and all... but at least they're heterosexual."

JOHN: "Still, we do have more than our share of queers, don't you think?"

PAUL: "It just seems that way because there's more printed about them over here."

RINGO: "If they find out somebody is a bit bent, the press will always splash it about."

PAUL: "Right. Take Profumo, for example. He's just an ordinary..."

RINGO: "...sex maniac."

PAUL: "...just an ordinary fellow who sleeps with women. Yet it's adultery in the eyes of the law, and it's an international incident. But in actual fact, if you check up on the statistics, you find that there are hardly any married men who've been completely faithful to their wives."

JOHN: "I have! Listen, Beatle people..."

PAUL: "Alright, we all know John's spotless. But when a thing like that gets into the newspapers, everybody goes very, very Puritan, and they pretend that they don't know what sex is about."

GEORGE: "They get so bloody virtuous all of a sudden."

PAUL: "Yes, and some poor heel has got to take the brunt of the whole thing. But in actual fact, If you ask the average Briton what they really think of the Profumo case, they'd probably say, 'He was knockin' off some bird. So what?'"

PLAYBOY: "Incidentally, you've met Mandy Rice-Davies haven't you?"

GEORGE: "What are you looking at 'me' for?"

PLAYBOY: "Because we hear she was looking at you."

JOHN: "We did meet Christine Keeler."

RINGO: "I'll tell you who I met. I met whats-her-name... April Ashley."

JOHN: "I met her, too, the other night."

PLAYBOY: "Isn't she the one who used to be a man, changed her sex and married into nobility?"

JOHN: "That's the one."

RINGO: "She swears at me, you know. But when she sobers up she apologizes."

JOHN: "Actually, I quite like her. Him. It. That."

PAUL: "The problem with saying something like, 'Profumo was just a victim of circumstances' or 'April Ashley isn't so bad, even though she's changed sex' -- saying things like that in print to most people seems so shocking; whereas in actual fact, if you really think about it, it isn't. Just saying things like that sounds much more shocking than it is."

RINGO: "I got up in the Ad Lib the other night, and a big handbag hit me in the gut. I thought it was somebody I knew; I didn't have my glasses on. I said, 'Hello,' and a bloody big worker went 'Arrgghhh.' So I just ran into the bog... because I'd heard about things like that."

PLAYBOY: "What are you talking about?"

GEORGE: "He doesn't know."

PLAYBOY: "Do you?"

GEORGE: "Haven't the slightest."

PLAYBOY: "Can you give us a hint, Ringo? What's the Ad Lib, for example?"

RINGO: "It's a club."

GEORGE: "Like your Peppermint Lounge and the Whiskey-a-Go-go. It's the same thing."

PAUL: " No, the English version is a little different."

JOHN: "The Whiskey-a-Go-go is exactly the same, isn't it? ...only they have someone dancing on the ceiling, don't they?"

GEORGE: "Don't be ridiculous. They have 'two' girls dancing on the roof. In the Ad Lib, they have a colored chap. That's the difference."

PLAYBOY: "We heard a rumor that one of you was thinking about opening a club."

JOHN: "I wonder who that was, Ringo."

RINGO: "I don't know, John. There was a rumor, yes. I heard that one, too."

PLAYBOY: "Is there any truth to it?"

RINGO: "Well, yes. We were going to open one in Hollywood, but it fell through."

JOHN: "Dino wouldn't let you take the place over."

RINGO: "No."

PAUL: "And we decided it's not worth it. So we decided to sit tight for six months, and then buy..."

GEORGE: "...America."

PLAYBOY: "Have you heard about the Playboy Club that's opening in London?"

RINGO: "Yes. I've heard about it."

PLAYBOY: "What do you think of our Clubs?"

RINGO: "They're for dirty old men, not for the likes of us-- dirty young men. They're for businessmen that sneak out without their wives knowing, or if their wives sneak out first, or those who go out openly."

GEORGE: "There's no real fun in a Bunny's fluffy tail."

PLAYBOY: "Then you don't think a Club will make it here?"

GEORGE: "Oh yes, 'course it will."

RINGO: "There's enough dirty old men here."

PLAYBOY: "Have you ever read the magazine?"

JOHN: "Yes."

GEORGE: "Yes."

RINGO: "I get my copy every month. Tits."

PLAYBOY: "Do you read any of the philosophy, any of you?"

PAUL: "Some of it. When the journey's really long, and you can't last out the pictures, you start reading it. It's OK."

PLAYBOY: "How about Playboy's Jazz Poll? Do you read it, too?"

JOHN: "Occasionally."

PLAYBOY: "Do you enjoy jazz, any of you?"

GEORGE: "What kind?"

PLAYBOY: "American jazz."

JOHN: "Who, for example?"

PLAYBOY: "You tell us."

PAUL: "We only dig those who dig us."

PLAYBOY: "Seriously, who? Anyone?"

JOHN: "Getz. But only because somebody gave me an album of his... with him, and somebody called Iguana or something like that."

PLAYBOY: "You mean Joao Gilberto?"

JOHN: "I don't know. Some Mexican."

PLAYBOY: "He's Brazilian."

JOHN: "Oh."

PLAYBOY: "Are you guys getting tired of talking?"

JOHN: "No."

PAUL: "No. Let's order some drinks. Scotch or Coke?"

JOHN: "I'll have chocolate."

GEORGE: "Scotch for me and Paul... and chocolate for the Beatle teenager."

JOHN: "Scotch is bad for your kidneys."

PAUL: "How about you, Ringo? Don't you want something to keep you awake while you're listening to all this rubbish?"

RINGO: "I'll have a Coke."

JOHN: "How about you, PLAYBOY? Are you a man or a woman?"

PAUL: "It's a Beatle people!"

GEORGE: "Who's your fave rave?"

PAUL: "I love 'you!'"

GEORGE: "How gear."

PLAYBOY: "Speaking of fave raves, why do you think the rock 'n roll phenomenon is bigger in England than in America?"

JOHN: "Is it?"

PAUL: "Yes. You see, in England... after us... you have thousands of groups coming out everywhere, but in America, they've just sort of had the same groups going for ages. Some have made it, and some haven't, but there aren't really any new ones. If we'd been over there instead of over here, there probably would have been the same upsurge over there. Our road manager made an interesting point the other day about this difference in America. In America, the people who are big stars are not our age. There's nobody who's really a big star around our age. Possibly it may seem like a small point, but there's no conscription... no draft... here. In America, we used to hear about somebody like Elvis, who was a very big star and then suddenly he was off to the Army."

JOHN: "And the Everly Brothers."

PAUL: "Yes, the Everly Brothers as well went into the Army at the height of their fame. And the Army seems to do something to singers. It may make them think that what they're playing is stupid and childish. Or it may make them want to change their style, and consequently, they may not be as popular when they come out of the Army. It may also make people forget them, and consequently, they may have a harder job getting back on top when they get out. But here, of course, we don't have that problem."

JOHN: "Except those who go to prison."

PAUL: "It's become so easy to form a group nowadays, and to make a record, that hundreds are doing it-- and making a good living at it. Whereas when we started, it took us a couple of years before record companies would even listen to us, never mind give us a contract. But now, you just walk in, and if they think you're OK, you're on."

PLAYBOY: "Do you think you had anything to do with bringing all this about?"

JOHN: "It's a damn fact."

PAUL: "Not only us. Us and people who followed us. But we were the first really to get national coverage because of some big shows that we did, and because of a lot of public interest in us."

PLAYBOY: "What do you think is the most important element of your success... the personal appearances, or the records?"

JOHN: "Records. Records have always been the main thing. P.A.'s follow records. Our first records were made, and then we appeared."

PLAYBOY: "Followed closely by Beatle Dolls. Have you seen them?"

GEORGE: They're actually life-size, you know."

PLAYBOY: "The ones we've seen are only about five inches high."

PAUL: "Well, we're midgets, you see."

PLAYBOY: "How does it make you feel to have millions of effigies of yourselves decorating bedsides all over the world? Don't you feel honored to have been immortalized in plastic? After all, there's no such thing as a Frank Sinatra doll, or an Elvis Presley doll."

GEORGE: "Who'd want an ugly old crap doll like that?"

PLAYBOY: "Would you prefer a George doll, George?"

GEORGE: "No, but I've got a Ringo doll at home."

PLAYBOY: "Did you know that you're probably the first public figures to have dolls made of them... except maybe Yogi Berra?"

JOHN: "In Jellystone Park. Do you mean the cartoon?"

PLAYBOY: "No. Didn't you know that the cartoon character is based on a real person... Yogi Berra, the baseball player?"

GEORGE: "Oh."

PLAYBOY: "Didn't you know that?"

JOHN: "I didn't know that."

PAUL: "Well, they're making 'us' into a cartoon, too, in the states. It's a series."

JOHN: "The highest achievement you could ever get."

PAUL: "We feel proud and humble."

PLAYBOY: "Did you know, George, that at the corner of 47th Street and Broadway in New York, there is a giant cutout of you on display?"

GEORGE: "Of me?"

PLAYBOY: "Life-size."

RINGO: "Nude."

PLAYBOY: "No... but the reason we mention it is that this is really a signal honor. For years on that corner, there's been a big store with life-size cutouts of Marilyn Monroe, Anita Ekberg, or Jayne Mansfield in the window."

JOHN: "And now it's George."

PAUL: "The only difference is that they've got bigger tits."

RINGO: "I suppose that's one way of putting it."

GEORGE: "The party's getting rough. I'm going to bed. You carry on, though. I'll just stop my ears with cotton... so as not to hear the insults and smutty language."

PLAYBOY: "We've just about run out of steam, anyway."

JOHN: "Do you have all you need?"

PLAYBOY: "Enough. Many thanks, fellows."

JOHN: "'Course a lot of it you won't be able to use-- 'crap' and 'bloody' and 'tit' and 'bastard' and all."

PLAYBOY: "Wait and see."

RINGO: "Finish your scotch before you go."

JOHN: "You don't mind if I climb into bed, do you? I'm frazzled."

PLAYBOY: "Not at all. Good night."

RINGO: "Good night, PLAYBOY."

GEORGE: "It's been a hard day's night."

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