I Met the Walrus_ How One Day With John Lennon Changed My Life Forever - Jerry Levitan [20]
Everything looked the same as I walked the six or seven blocks to the bus stop. But it was not the same. My mind felt different. The dream was continuing but somehow my eyes were wide open. Climbing aboard the Bathurst Street bus that went all the way downtown, I grabbed the same single seat I usually took. Toronto had three newspapers in those days. There was a morning, afternoon, and evening edition. The afternoon editions were out, and as I looked through the bus window I could see bold headlines above a picture of John and Yoko on the cover of every paper. “Beatle flies to Toronto, detained at airport,” proclaimed the Globe and Mail. And at each stop people were staring at the box and holding up papers and reading voraciously. There was pride in Toronto that day. I could see it in those faces. And I was special.
Traffic was unusually congested as the bus approached King Street. Standing impatiently at the front and holding on to the pole, I could see why. The lanes in front of the King Edward Hotel were blocked off. I asked the driver to let me out. I leaped onto the street and ran towards the hotel. Police on horses, trolleys, religious and political protesters, draft dodgers, peddlers, the Mounties, and kids—tons of kids—were all parading in front of the entrance. In the morning the setting was serene. Now it was a circus, a Beatle circus starring John and Yoko.
Police were holding back the crowd and I slipped my way into the revolving front doors. In the lounge a haggard looking man in his early thirties was having a drink, a scotch I think, and munching on peanuts. There was a reel-to-reel tape recorder in a case, at his feet. Before I could ask him if he was from CHUM, he said, “You the kid?” “Yes,” I proudly replied, and I discerned, even at my young age, a look of disbelief on his face. He was one of the deejays at CHUM-FM. And he was about to play technician for a kid in the presence of the biggest rock star of all time. He gulped the remnants of his drink, grabbed his case, and said, “Let’s go.”
I walked again into the brass-plated elevator with the British crown embossed all over it. Time stood still as I watched the arrow above the door smoothly move from floor to floor until it hit eight. The door opened but as soon as I stepped out, two big palms pressed against my chest and forcefully pushed me back into the elevator. It was a burly cop who was stationed on the floor. The deejay flashed his ID. “He’s with me,” he said. “He has an interview. It’s legit.” The cop motioned us to get out and waived us on. As I stepped out I could see dozens of kids in the hall, roped off by the police, hoping to get a glimpse of Beatle John Lennon. One of them was a kid from school. “Jerry! Jerry! Let me in with you. Please! Please!” he begged. I shrugged my shoulders. I hardly knew him and I was not in the mood to share my good fortune.
As we turned the corner, a row of reporters and journalists sat single file on chairs facing the closed door of the suite. Most of them seemed to be American media. That was what John wanted and they were all eager to get an audience with him.
When John casually said to a British journalist in 1966 that the Beatles were more relevant to youth than Christianity, it created a worldwide backlash that resulted in record burnings and death threats. Paul McCartney gave a truthful answer as to whether he had tried LSD and it made headlines. A statement from the controversial John Lennon condemning America’s involvement in Vietnam would have been a bombshell. It was as if the press were egging him on and hoping for the political Beatle to take a stand. (Years later Nixon tried to have John deported when he became even more outspoken about the Vietnam War. The U.S. government saw Lennon as such a serious threat that the FBI closely monitored his actions and created a file on him that was more than four hundred