John Lennon

If you had to live as a Beatles member over, what would you change?

My socks, I promise. Guitar strings too once in a while. Hard to say. If I had to go back in time and relive it, my guess is I'd do exactly the same thing again, 'cause how would I know the difference? And if it's a got the group together again now thing, well, it's already changed because George is also no longer physical, so we'd have to have someone to channel him if we wanted to be able to play as a live band again. As opposed to the virtual band Lesley and I are on tape.

So you think you would feel the same then knowing what you know now?

The thing I'd be most concerned about changing is really my own attitude…and that has already changed immensely. I've said before that I've grown up more since my death than I ever did when I was alive. I had everything on a plate in my physical life. Insead of being a bigheaded moron telling myself I'm the best, which of course operates in direct proportion to my own insecurities, I'd be more concerned with just doing better work. And I'd try to keep more a level head throughout.

If I could I'd want to have been more articulate, instead of throwing it out the first way it lands on my tongue and trying to patch it over afterwards. People thought it was brag, it wasn't brag, and it was a complaint. "Okay Lord, I wanted to be big, but now that I'm big I don't know what to do, so please tell me." And of course if the answer didn't form quickly enough, and it usually didn't, I'd start going down the tunnel to find that train. I'd like to think I'd be a nicer person, a more thoughtful one, but maybe I'd just go outside less.

Since you have said that channeling through Lesley was a random thing, and we assume that you can only channel through one person at a time, do you know if there is a purpose connected to using this particular person? After all, it might be random, but you wound up attaching yourself to a Beatles aficionado and a musician and someone who had portrayed you musically in a tribute band. It's not like the kind of random that would have placed you in the body of a short-order cook in Memphis.

Well, as fate would have it, the short-order cook in Memphis only knew Elvis Presley songs.

Now, to my personal memory and knowledge, I cannot say that I either know or remember why exactly I ended up herewith Lesley and his wife, Vanessa. Except that all this is a very tall order, and not everyone could remotely handle it. So that implies that maybe Lesley and Vanessa are very special, and specially prepared people. One does have to consider the both of them in the pondering of this question. And I didn't attach myself; I landed where I landed, best I can tell.

In the beginning, none of us really knew why I landed here, with them. Now, in retrospect, I have a much better idea. If one can say there was a fifth Beatle, Lesley is it. Back in 1964, the group was asked something like "How are you able to blend your voices so well?" And I replied, "because we're four parts of the same person." It's a matter of record. Go look it up. Now, if I was right when I said that in 1964, then I will now tell you that Lesley is that person, a fifth element, central as an axis to the four of us. And if I am not right, then at the least you are looking at one person who can do what it took all four of us to do, think about that one.

So why I ended up with Lesley Jane is because he was a missing piece of the puzzle, in a way that he himself hardly yet understands. This is obvious to me. At the time of being The Beatles, we often felt that there was something, or someone, helping us. In retrospect, I believe that what The Beatles is, is a combination of the five of us. Meeting Lesley has kind of been like finding my muse. But even a muse gets tired you know. They can get pretty bitchy too when they do. But Lesley's right, this is bigger than both of us.

But you attached yourself to them.

I didn't attach myself; I got relocated and ended up where I ended up. It's only now that I can really sense the reason. And it is that Lesley is one of us. Lesley is a Beatle. There isn't four, there's five, and Lesley's it.

You were a strong solo personality who was bent on disassociating yourself with The Beatles. Why does it appear that in your work with Lesley the only emphasis is upon The Beatles part of your musical life?

Only emphasis? Well, it's not that you know. Granted, it's a back-to-the-egg-like component, but when you've heard our work, and I mean all of our work at www.ampcast.com/BEATLESEX, you will see that what it really is, is a combination of many approaches mixed together. We simply returned to our favorite cast of characters. A song will sound like one thing if Paul does it with Wings, and another if he does it with us. Plus, Lesley likes The Beatles--especially the early stuff--and has indeed encouraged me that it's okay to like that part of my past, and to even dare and reclaim it.

But The Beatles was what it was, because it was fuckin' good, you know? So eventually you return to that, or secretly try to when no one is looking, 'cause you just do. It's like, if you had once had a certain summer as a kid where you discovered you could fly, and you did it like crazy all summer, and then you forgot how. Now and then, you'd try and remember, and do it again if you could. Yes you would, who the hell are you fooling?

Then how has your songwriting progressed?

I do try and write with more depth, as I did in my later work, but I'm no longer throwing the baby out with the bathwater just 'cause it's got any elements from my Beatles period. Screw that, it's all mine, I invented it, and that's it. For me to be told I can't reclaim a sound, which I created, is to be swindled, and balls to that. Even by my last album in physical life I was reclaiming that sound.

I had a real hard time with understanding the worthiness of the songs I'd already made as a Beatle, but finding again that knack which had allowed me to make those songs in the first place. Lesley's years of patience and devotion to helping me is what made it even possible to begin with. You think I had patience to do it alone? No. Forget it. But with Lesley, I have done it. I consider an incalculable amount of Beatlesex tracks to be every bit as good as anything we ever did as The Beatles.

You have made post-life comments about how awful the living Beatles treated your two songs in the Anthology. So, if you had lived, would you have been for or against the Anthology?

Oh I would've been for the Anthology; I just would've had more say in it than I did. Which isn't to say I had no say, because they did use a whole lot of my interviews, etcetera. But I would've liked to offer the "since then" perspective that Paul, George and Ringo were able to do in the Anthology, which I was not able to do. Well okay, I was able to do it, but no one asked me. Even in the face of the last bit at the end of the second and third parts of the three televised portions of Anthology, which is me, John Lennon, saying, "I'm ready to sing for the world, I just need the backing." Ironic, huh?

And had I been in on the sessions, the ones that yielded "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love," even if we had done those same two songs, they would've sounded different. I didn't care much for what I will call "Jeff Lynne's antiseptic production." He took a lot more chances with his own group. No less meticulous, but more interesting. With the two Anthology ones he couldn't have been more careful, too damn careful. Careful about everything but not making a goddamn boring record. It was good. It was clean. Too good. Too clean. And so, it was virtually worse than if they'd done nada.

You would have made some noise in the studio, then?

I'd have had my footprint on everyone's ass had I been in the studio with them. And not a drop of spontaneity to be found in the whole damn song, except at the end with the ukulele player, and that wasn't even one of us, it was some ukulele player they added at the end for a laugh. That uke at the end sounds like the one thing remotely like an idea of mine.

Yes of course, I wrote the song, but they shaped it, all I had done was sing and play piano. And my vocals? From a demo? Aweful. And it would've been one thing if they'd all used a crappy mike. So that we all kind of had the same sort of sound. But instead it's tinny demo of me, and an $800,000 studio microphone for Paul and George (and Ringo, if he actually sang any of it.)

So what happens? It only serves as a pointed reminder: "Oh, poor John's dead. Arrrrrgh." I saw how everyone reacted to that, it was not the first Beatles record in 25 years. It was the last one. Breaking up in the '70s didn't destroy The Beatles. "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love," the way they were presented, destroyed The Beatles. Because before then, there was no telling "can they still do it or not"…after that, there was.

Free As A Bird got a polite response and secretly made everyone feel as sick as it made me feel. And I do think my mates meant well, but it was all wrong and they soon figured that out, which is why there was not another one. Initially there'd been talk of doing more, but public reaction, even though it had sold some, was unilaterally wearing this pained gray face about it.

Yet, Lesley and I have succeeded in making tons of records that have, very much alive, the sound that was The Beatles. We can do it. While Paul, George, Ringo and Jeff could not. You wanted to know. Even Fred Seaman, who heard Lesley and my version of Free As A Bird, said he liked our version better than The Beatles' Anthology version. I used to joke about it and call those two "new Beatles records" from Anthology, a couple of "B-L-O" records, which of course is a reference to "E-L-O," Jeff Lynne's group Electric Light Orchestra.

Apparently, between Lesley and I, we know how to tune in to them more than they can tune in to even themselves or me anymore. They forgot. We didn't. Well actually, the real genius at remembering was Lesley, 'cause I too forgot, you know. Lesley helped me reclaim the very sound I'd fathered. I really do wish we could've achieved contact with the boys while George was still alive though. That bothers me. It bothers Lesley Jane as well.

Is there any way you can "get to" the two remaining ex-Beatles to let them know you are working on this plane?

I know how you're asking this, you mean is there any way I can "appear" to them? Apparently not. You have to be open to the idea. Paul isn't. We've put through word to Paul through various organizations that answer to him. At this point, I feel absolutely certain that Paul does know all about us.

And although he's said nothing, I don't doubt that he would make it his business to see us shut down if he thought we weren't on the level. Perhaps he's just too scared to be the one to break it to the world, and he just keeps an eye on us. Lesley is not as sure of this as I, but I am dead certain that Paul does know about Beatlesex and has inspected our work at great length. The thing that gets me is when I start to think that Paul prefers me dead. And yeah, it hurts to think me old pal is full of crap, but it really burns me that he's trying to rewrite the past. Because The Beatles was my group. Everyone got that? Paul is like the Republican of The Beatles, rewriting history as it suits him. He'll have you thinking it was all his idea. He'll have you thinking it was his group. But that's bullshit. The Beatles was my idea.

I was the leader, and I ran it like: When we don't need a leader, no one's leader, and when we do, I'm it. It was my group. I even named us. Several times actually, till one stuck.

Would you like to see a quasi-Beatles reunion with, say, Paul, Ringo, Dhani Harrison and Lesley as you?

Yeah, that sort of seems like the ultimate point to all this. I take exception to the "Lesley as me" thing. Lesley hasn't been "as me" since it was a Beatles cover band in a woodshed in Canarsie. I'm me, and Lesley is Lesley. But yeah, we need to have Lesley channeling me as much as we'll need Dhani channeling George. We'd have to Teach Dhani how to channel his dad, if he isn't already working on it, which we do not rule out, and the hardest part is still Paul. If Paul does it, Ringo will do it.

So some kind of reuniting has been part of the plan with you and Lesley?

Lesley and I have been trying to get the group back together now for more years than we've had records made. We've only been making records since '93. We've been trying to set up a Beatles reunion for much longer. But now, at least there's Beatlesex, which more often than not is the same thing as an outright reunion. It kind of proved to us that we didn't really need a reunion.

What other secrets from the other side do you have to share other than the dead can channel through the living?

The most important thing I need to share is The Lesson, which I outline in my Beatlesex song, "Learning It The Hard Way." Hold on to life while you have it and make the most of it that you can.

Physical life is a sort of school. An existence school. It is easier to learn in this physical realm, much of what one needs to know in Eternity. Because in Eternity, you are in a realm very much of your own creation. And if all you can create is not very nice, then all you have is a not very nice reality.

Here, in this physical realm, things take time to happen. That can be a blessing, because it gives one time to achieve a better understanding of how to create a better reality. This is how physical reality is, like riding a bike with the training wheels still on it. This is why there are some people who come back again and again, no matter what anyone tells you to the contrary; because they just ain't ready to handle Eternity. If all you can do is keep materializing tigers and they keep eating you, then you either reincarnate and get the hell out of there or you learn to sing the famous Beethoven's Fifth. In other words, when you know how to make the tiger either go away or be nice, then maybe you are ready to handle Eternity, certainly not before.

And perhaps that is the biggest reason I am still here, 'cause I ain't ready for there yet. That just occurred to me. I've always assumed it was unfinished work, and maybe it was. But what if it is just a matter of learning more without having to be reborn, but also being able to stay me, and yet still within this safer physical realm? It could be, at that.

Now that you have seen an afterlife, how do you feel about your lyric "God is a concept by which we measure our pain"?

Well, now that's a supreme example of how I used to love being a know-it-all. Between that line and "Imagine there's no Heaven," it's a wonder I didn't just end up in hell, and sometimes I'm not sure I didn't. There is a God. I can say that now, and I couldn't before.

How long is Eternity?

Too long to want to face without having pretty well indeed, learned the art of existence. Or: How to live. And you want a hint? To give is to live, so give more, live more. Amazing, and sad, how many people die without ever knowing they have lived?