I Met the Walrus_ How One Day With John Lennon Changed My Life Forever - Jerry Levitan [0]
How One Day with John Lennon Changed My Life Forever
Jerry Levitan
John and Yoko being interviewed. I had just snuck into their room. That’s the back of my head in the foreground. Jeff Goode/Toronto Star
TO MY BELOVED PARENTS,
CHONON AND JUDITH LEVITAN.
THEY HAD FAITH IN ME,
BELIEVED IN ME, AND LOVED ME.
My favorite photo. John and Yoko sweetly holding each other’s hands and looking at each other’s fingers. I was struck by how beautiful Yoko was.
“I REMEMBER FONDLY, HOW YOUNG JERRY CAME TO US AND DID THE INTERVIEW, WHEN SO MANY JOURNALISTS WERE TRYING TO SPEAK TO US. HE WAS NOT ONLY BRAVE BUT VERY CLEAR AND INTELLIGENT. BOTH JOHN AND I THOUGHT IT WAS A VERY PLEASANT EXPERIENCE.”
YOKO ONO
John signs his name and draws a caricature of him and Yoko on the Two Virgins album for me. Jeff Goode/Toronto Star.
Contents
Epigraph
1 Meet the Beatles
2 I Met the Walrus
3 In My Life
4 Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author and Illustrator
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
MEET THE BEATLES
I was nine years old when the Beatles first performed on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. It was February 9, and like millions of other families in those days, we sat around the TV each Sunday night at 8:00 P.M. to be entertained by that awkward yet strangely captivating impresario. That night there was a special buzz to his show. He was to showcase his latest find, four lads from Liverpool, England, who were taking their country and the music world by storm. The Beatles were something special. Girls screamed and fainted at the sight of them. Their mop-top haircuts made them controversial and gave them a slight edge of mystery and danger. Everyone anticipated their appearance for different reasons. I was practically vibrating from all the excitement.
Sullivan came on the black-and-white TV and in his distinct speaking manner said, “This city never has witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool who call themselves the Beatles. Ladies and Gentlemen…the Beatles!” With that announcement, my family and a nation were mesmerized as they opened the show with “All My Loving,” accompanied by high-pitched, never-ending screams from teenage girls. John, Paul, George, and Ringo were confident and cute as they performed four other songs (“Till There Was You,” “She Loves You,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand”) between the other acts, including a magician performing a card and saltshaker trick, an impressionist, and a comedy acrobatic troupe. The Beatles took my breath away. I had officially witnessed my first great spectacle.
Ringo kept the happy beat on an elevated stage looking down on his mates on a set that had huge arrows pointing at them. Paul played his distinctive, violin-shaped left-handed bass; George was on lead guitar. But John—standing in that quintessential Lennon style, defiant, guitar high up against his chest, legs apart—was clearly the band’s leader. They bounced to the beat, well dressed in black suits, thin black ties, and pointed Beatle boots. And, relative to most other people at the time, longish wavy hair. This was a new kind of rock and roll star. The camera would cut away to shots of young girls in various fits of ecstasy and insanity, and a smattering of boys, who were in rapt, yet reserved attention. At one point their first names were flashed on the screen under their faces: “Paul,” “George,” “Ringo,” “John: Sorry girls, he’s married.” The cultural phenomenon that was the Beatles was well underway that night as a history-making seventy-three million North Americans tuned in to see what the fuss was all about.
Something happened to me when I saw the Beatles for the first time. Before then my heroes had been comic book characters like Superman and Batman. But the Beatles were something better. They were superheroes with instruments and great musical powers. They were instantly familiar to me and I trusted them immediately. I had found new heroes to worship.