DREAM LOVERS

JOHN & YOKO IN NYC

BY ADAM KLUGER

Photographer: Brian Hamill remembers John

Renowned celebrity photojournalist Brian Hamill delivers his own insider view of this Beatles icon, through intense, intimate photographic portraits and insightful texts. Whether Lennon is dominating the stage, posing on the roof of the Dakota building, or relaxing with Yoko Ono, Hamill’s photography takes this quasi-mythical figure from the world of Rock ‘n’ Roll and shows him as the man he really was. -Amazon

“Brian looked at the John Lennon who had become an icon and saw instead a familiar face. He saw a working-class hero like those that built the City of New York. And so when John Lennon came to live in New York, Brian captured him as a New Yorker, in the joyous images that you will find in this book.” - Pete Hamill

There was an assignment for Parade magazine in September of 1972 to photograph John and Yoko at home. My older brother Pete had known John from 1963 when he had done a piece on the Beatles for the Saturday Evening Post and he was doing immigration columns on him when John was having all those problems with immigration. So, he reached out to John and said my brother has got this assignment and John said, “yeah, tell him to come over,” So the date was arranged and it was October 13th, 1972 and when I went there to 105 Bank street was the address ...I had 30 black and white 8 by 10’s I had made up from the concert on August 30th, 1972 of John and Yoko at Madison Square Garden to give him.

He answered the door alone. The only other person in the apartment was Yoko and I thought ok where the hell is the publicity person but there was none of that so I felt a little more relaxed then and he answered the door and he said, “Hi Brian, I’m John,” (laugh) as like I didn’t know who he was...and he said, “would you like a cuppa?,” and I declined his offer of tea but he made me relaxed right away and he sounded like a working-class guy from my hood in Park Slope. In those days Park Slope was an Irish American neighborhood it was the end with a lot of tenements, factories, and bars but he reminded me of one of the guys I grew up with he had that kind of workingclass thing.

So, I photographed him in the apartment and after I shot for about 45 minutes I laid the concert stills on him, from August and they were sitting on their bed in the living room/ bedroom and they were going through the stills and the phone rang and Yoko answered it and she said,” hello ok ok hold on I’ll put John on the phone,” and the two of them were listening

to somebody and I could hear music drifting in through the phone and after he spoke and listened for about two or three minutes he said to whoever it was,” let me call you back because we’re right now in the middle of going through some beautiful photographs taken by Brian Hamill,” in my head I thought he must have said that for my benefit but nevertheless I took it as a nice compliment.

I photographed him three and a half years later at the Dakota - the same thing I went up there I told the doorman I’m here to see John Lennon He called up to the 7th floor. Same thing John answered the door himself -nobody else was in there, not even Yoko was in there this time in fact he said to me,” Yoko is downstairs she’s busy in her office so I’m all yours.” So, I proceeded to do a lot of pictures of him in his Dakota apartment and we ended up on the roof of the Dakota. So, in the new book, you’ll see photos I took in both Bank Street and the Dakota. And in the Dakota I was much more relaxed having already met him and how friendly he was and I photographed him and Yoko in the Village. In the Village, after photographing him in the apartment we walked around the Village and we ended up at Bank Street Pier which was one of his favorite spots in the Village he told me. I took several pictures of them on the pier looking out at the river and one of them is the back cover of the book and I remember him saying,” wow, this river is magical,” and it was. it was a special October 13th and he had been 32 years old four days earlier so he was just like a very special dude.

we were walking through the Dakota and there was a jukebox and I said how about some photos in front of the jukebox and he said,” yeah- would you like to hear anything?” and I said yeah and I didn’t want to say play me a john Lennon song so I just said,” do you have any Marvin Gaye?” this is February 25th, 1975 and he said,” yeah of course I love Marvin Gaye,” and he put on What’s Going On - a great album and at one point after the What’s Going On song ended he was singing along with the words he knew the words and this is before you could read what the lyrics were and he seemed to know it so he must have listened to it... and after that song finished I said to him, “this is the most inventive album of the 70’s so far,” and then I thought to myself what the f*ck did I just say to John Lennon, holy sh*t-- talk about a faux pas because John had 4 or 5 good albums out already but he was cool and there was like a little bit of a pause and then it was like a gift came down from heaven he said, “I agree it’s a great f*ckin album.”

Then we walked into the kitchen. We sat down and I was shooting away with the camera and I was talking at the same time and he said,” hold on I just got an idea for a lyric,” and he picks up a piece of paper and it had a lot of handwriting on it and then he took a few minutes and I didn’t shoot because I didn’t want to interrupt his process and he wrote a few more sentences and I always wondered what song that was, but in the middle of it he said, “I’m fooking hungry, you hungry?” Fooking he said with a Liverpool accent and I was hungry. When he said to me,” I’m fooking hungry, are you hungry?” I said, “yeah,” and he said “how about a toastie? I said, “a toastie?” I didn’t know what a toastie was. He said,”

you guys call it a grilled crisp or grilled cheese or something,” and I said, “oh yeah, yeah I could eat that,” I said,” yeah sure, I like grilled cheese,” and he whipped up two toasties (laugh) and he added some chips and we sat down and we ate and he scarfed his down he must have been starving.

I asked him how is the roof for photographs and he said,” fooking great” The wind was blowing like crazy and I told him, “John your hair is all over the place,” --even though he had one of those oversized French berets on but his hair was longer than it was on Bank Street and it was blowing like wild -- and we got to the roof and I pulled my snap open cap out of my pocket because I liked the way John wore it and I said, “ I copped your style,” John smiled and chuckled but didn’t say anything --I told him about his hair blowing and he said, “ don’t worry about it do your thing,” he never once looked at a mirror, like when you do movie shoots the actors they look at themselves quite a bit during the shoot but he didn’t do that he was like a working-class guy. He never once pressured me about time --he never did that and neither did Yoko when I photographed the two of them together at Bank Street, they didn’t give me a time limit or anything. Anyway, I said “were you ever influenced by Dylan?” and he said,” no,” and he pointed to his Elvis pin and he said, “no, I’m in awe of Dylan and a lot of his lyrics are fantastic but this is the guy right here who made me want to be a rock and roller,” and he pointed to his Elvis pin. As we were leaving he put his hand on my back and he pointed at my cap and I still had my cap on and my gear and everything and he was funny, he said, “don’t worry about copping my style, Brian, I copped it from Dylan” (laugh) and that was how it ended that was the last time I saw the guy alive, on February 25th, 1975.

He was a good dude when we were taking photos in the Village people stopped him but he never got mobbed people stopped him to say hello and just chat with him and he and Yoko both were nice completely nice, more than nice. They were very humane and I can tell because I got a good street guy radar and I can tell when somebody is bullsh*tting trying to be nice and they never did that they never made themselves seem more important than the person asking the question so I liked them--I liked both of them. I liked her a lot too she was nice.