I Met the Walrus_ How One Day With John Lennon Changed My Life Forever - Jerry Levitan [28]
The deejay started putting his equipment away—unplugging the recorder, taking out the tape reel carefully, and putting it into a box. I found it incredible then and now that he had not uttered one word to John. John would have undoubtedly answered some questions, and he too would have had a scoop. Yet he must have been either so taken with what he had just observed or simply could not summon up the courage to speak.
Rather than ask me to leave, John and Yoko continued chatting with me. I told them again how much I liked their music. I asked him about the album cover and what the photos were. Yoko told me that the black-and-white photo—John valiantly clutching a distraught Yoko surrounded by London bobbies—was when the police charged them for drug possession. “It was terrible,” she said, shaking her head. Turning the cover over, I asked what the colored side was. Yoko was silent, and John told me it was when she’d been in the hospital. That is all he said. I came to know later that it was when Yoko suffered a miscarriage and John slept on the floor next to her. The album itself included three songs about that experience: “No Bed For Beatle John,” which had John and Yoko singing out newspaper clippings about them; “Baby’s Heartbeat,” an actual recording of their child before the mishap; and then “Two Minutes Silence,” which was just that.
At that moment, Derek Taylor popped in again. “John, Mary Hopkin has flown in and is opening for Engelbert Humperdinck tonight here in Toronto. She sends her love.” “Send it back,” John said, looking at Yoko and then chuckling to me. Mary Hopkin was the seventeen-year-old protégé of Paul. He had seen her on a British talent show called Opportunity Knocks in 1967, and for her, opportunity knocked big time when he invited her to an audition in London. Taken with her voice and innocence, McCartney produced “Those Were the Days,” which became a massive worldwide hit. Sweet and lovely, pretty and poppy, it was precisely not what John was into at the time and his reaction made clear to me, months before we would learn of the real rancor and artistic disputes within the Beatles, the tension that existed between John and Paul.
“You want to go in me place?” John asked me with a twinkle in his eye. “Sure thing!” I replied, amazed that I was still being treated to such gifts by my hero. He motioned the Capitol Records PR man forward. “The lad here will go in me place to the Engeldick concert to see Mary Hopkin. Make sure he gets a good seat and give him the VIP treatment.” The PR man nodded deferentially and stood waiting for other commands. I stood up and then so did John and Yoko. “Thank you so much, John. I’ll never forget it,” I said staring into his kind eyes. “Thank you, Yoko.” “Pleasure, man,” John said smiling, picking up the album because I had forgotten it again.
Yoko left the room, and John put “The Ballad of John and Yoko” on the turntable again and playfully danced with Kyoko. The PR man gave me his card and on the back wrote a note for me to give to someone at the theater. “I’ll see you there later. This will get you in to the show and to the party afterwards.” He barely finished his sentence when a jolting thought went off in my brain. “John!” I shouted, somewhat startling him. “How do I get in touch with you?” He smiled and took a calling card from the PR man. On its back he wrote:
The “secret code” John gave me to be able to contact him.
Anthony Fawcett
c/o J & Y c/o Apple
3 Savile Row
London W1S
“It’s a code,” he told me, handing me the card. “This way
John opens up about peace, love, war, music, and the fate of the Beatles. Jeff Goode/Toronto Star.
“Whatever you write will get to me.” “Thanks, John,” I said. “I won’t let anyone else know.” “That’s the lad,” he replied, nodding his head with an approving smile.
The deejay asked if I was all set, and I said yes. I did not want to go, but I knew that I had to. I waved good-bye to Derek