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It was a minute or two before 6:00 P.M. and I strutted to the door, the deejay deferentially behind. All of them sitting there were hoping for an audience. No one had been let in. John and Yoko had been at Canadian customs for hours in the afternoon and had just recently returned to the hotel. A seasoned reporter grabbed my arm and stopped me. “Where you going, Buster?” he muttered, clearly not wanting to give up his place in the pecking order. “I have an appointment at 6:00,” I said, trying to break free to the laughter of everyone there. The door opened. Derek Taylor appeared, immaculate and proper as always. “Where is the lad?” he spoke in the Queen’s English. I waved and broke free from the reporter and walked by them all to gasps of astonishment.

Derek led me to a chair placed in front of an empty couch. He directed the deejay to set up his equipment. Kyoko was in the room dancing around in front of a record player that played a new Beatle single. There was no mistaking the sound and the voice of John Lennon singing in harmony with Paul McCartney. It was “The Ballad of John and Yoko.” I heard this single for the first time, before anyone, in John’s hotel room. It would be released within days.

Me and my hero, face to face.

“John and Yoko will be out in a few minutes. They are getting dressed,” Derek told me and walked away. It was at that moment—with only the deejay, Kyoko, and I in the room—that I realized I had not prepared a single question. My panic was interrupted when John and Yoko plopped down right in front of me. His long hair had brushed my cheek. He moved fast in a bouncy, excited, childlike sort of way. “Do you want a photo then?” he said softly, eyeing the Brownie around my neck. “Sure,” I answered. The deejay took the camera off my neck and said, “I’ll take it.” It would be weeks before I would see the photograph: John and I looking into each other’s eyes, just inches away from each other.

* * *

“ASK AWAY,” JOHN SAID, AND I BEGAN TO TALK.

* * *

JERRY: John, could you please tell us what the situation is with you and your entry into the United States?

JOHN: It’s still sort of nowhere, you know? Like a lot of people don’t want me in, you know; they think I’m gonna cause a violent revolution, which I’m not. And the others don’t want me in ’cause they don’t want me to cause peace either. War is big business, you know, and they like war ’cause it keeps them fat and happy, and I’m anti-war so they’re trying to keep me out. But I’ll get in ’cause they’ll have to own up in public that they’re against peace.

JERRY: What can we as the youth do to try and help you?

JOHN: Help me by helping yourselves. Just think that the militant revolutionaries…ask them to show you one revolution that turned out to be what it promised militantly. Take Russia, France, anywhere that had civil war. They all start out with good intentions. What they do is smash the place down then build it up again and the people who build it up hang on to it and then they become the establishment. You guys are going to be the establishment in a few years. It’s not worth knocking it down ’cause it’s convenient to have the rooms and the machinery. The thing is to protest, but protest nonviolently. Violence begets violence, you know, and if you run around wild you get smacked, and that’s it. That’s the law of the universe. And they’ve got all the weapons and they’ve got all the money and they know how to fight violence ’cause they been doing it for thousands of years, suppressing us, and the only thing they don’t know about is nonviolence and humor. There’s many ways of promoting peace, and we are doing it with humor and nonviolence. It’s convenient for John and Yoko to stay in bed, you know. It might be convenient for other people. We just use some of our time. The position we’re in is under a fishbowl, in a fishbowl. What we’re doing now is having a mirror in the fishbowl and reflecting back what happens to us. That’s all we can do. But there