DISGRACELAND - John Lennon (Pt. 1): “John Lennon, I’m going to kill you, you phony bastard.”

Episode Date: July 10, 2018

John Lennon was a walking contradiction: a violent pacifist and a creative genius marred by creative inconsistency. Just as he was getting his groove back, he was gunned down by Mark David Chapman, a self-loathing narcissist who was obsessed with his contradictory hero, as well as with Lennon’s musical rival, Todd Rundgren and J.D. Salinger’s angsty, Holden Caulfield from The Catcher In The Rye. Hear how all of these factors and more contributed to the musical icon’s senseless murder in the first installment of a two part Disgraceland episode. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠. This episode was originally published on July 10, 2018. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠   Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. John Lennon is celebrated as a defiant icon of the peace and love generation. The Smart Beetle, a dedicated husband, endoting father to his young son, whose life was tragically cut short by a bullet from a deranged fan. All of that is true, and all of that is also untrue. John Lennon was a violent, philandering, absentee,

dad, and drug and alcohol-abusing, insecure mess of a man, whose life he left in the manipulative hands of his Machiavellian witch of a wife, Yoko Ono, a woman he truly loved, and who truly loved him back. Throughout his life, he'd been fiercely independent, but by the 70s, he would hardly make any move of consequence without first having his wife consult the complicated cosmic algorithm of horoscopes, numerology, real-life oracles, and tarot cards. He was a longtime critic of the trappings of the material world, yet he empowered his wife to build a financial empire through real estate, Egyptian art, and prized cattle, and was prone to lavish $100,000 shopping sprees on a whim. He was one of the greatest musicians to ever record, yet after

the Beatles, his records were marred by creative inconsistency, and he'd seated his place that top the charts to his former bandmate Paul McCartney, a thing that bothered him so much that he avoided the radio for fear of hearing the cute beetle blanketing the airwaves with silly love songs. He was a walking contradiction, complicated, simple, completely full of shit and totally true to himself all at the same time. But by 1980, John Lennon was reclaiming the better parts of himself and starting over, making great music again.

That music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from a Melotron called Tango Moving Piano MK2. I pledged you that loop because I can't afford the license for Lady by Kenny Rogers. And why would I play you that specific slice of sad, sack, country-pollitan cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on December 8, 1980. And that was the day that a different, violent and insecure mess of a man emerged from the shadows outside the Dakota apartments on West Seventy 2nd Street and shot John Lennon down, ending the complex and wildly entertaining musicians' life.

On this episode, messy men, country-pollitan cheese, walking contradictions in a dead beetle. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Mr. and Mrs. Mark David Chapman, newlyweds residing on the 21st floor of Honolulu's luxury Kakoui Plaza apartment building, didn't do much socializing and even less hosting. Mark was intense, a big man, smart, articulate, at times compassionate, but lately prone to sudden fits of rage filled with bizarre proclamations picked up from trips down the John Lennon rabbit hole he'd recently discovered. Hosting for the Chapman's was an attempt at normal. Spam Masubi appetizers and mitis were on the menu, so Gloria Chapman concerned herself with being a good hostess. But what was most on her mind was her husband's behavior.

It was a small group. Two of their friends, a couple, were on their way over, and Gloria Chapman prayed that her husband would keep it together and not embarrass her. It was early October 1980, and Mark David Chapman was spiraling into madness and toward an uncertain fate. But in the last few weeks, he'd at least found a purpose. John Lennon is full of shit,

and he hasn't made anything worth to listen since the Beatles. Now listen to that. That's music. Todd Rundgren's latest long player defaced the music by his band Utopia, Blair from Chapman's new Pioneer XL turntable. The record player, like the record, was brand new. Mark had destroyed the old one a couple months back in a fit of rage.

This was a superior. record player anyway, and to Mark David Chapman, Rungren's satirical send-up of John Lennon on to Face the Music was superior to anything Lennon had released since the Beatles. Todd Rundgren was the anti-Lennon. Rundgren had taken it upon himself to speak truth to pop culture power. Todd Rundgren, the immensely talented American musician and producer, had made a career out of pushing the limits of pop songs as well as the limits of pop startup. And to him, John Lennon had turned out to be a fraud, a fake, a Fugazi.

In the 60s, Lenin's songs and Devil May Care swing at pop stardom had broken the mold. But in the 70s, Lenin had proved to be ordinary, contented by his cult of personality, his limousine liberalism, and uneven post-Beatles creative output. Rungrim believed that John Lennon had sold out the musical promise of the Beatles for middle-age economic stability. He'd become exactly what he'd once railed against as a young, angry, counterculture activist with a sharp wit and intoxicating primal scream. Hold up in Manhattan's prestigious Dakota apartments with his army of servants, macrobiotic dinners, champagne cocktails and cocaine appetizers,

addicted to daytime television, and lording over a real estate empire that included much of upstate New York and a good portion of southern Florida. For a Lenin fan like Rungren, this all seemed a touch too passive, a touch too safe, for a one-time revolutionary and musical renegade. But hey, whatever gets you through the night. And Todd Rundgren hit the lethargic John Lennon where it hurt with the face of the music. The album was the latest haymaker in a public round of spadding between Rundgren and Lennon. The two had been going at it since the mid-70s, verbally slapping each other back and forth

in the pages of melody maker. Lenin, going so far as to contribute to his history, historical op-ed entitled, An Open Letter to Saad Runtle Stuntle. But Rundgren got the best of Lenin. He deployed his favorite weapons of choice against the ex-beetle, music and satire. To face the music is incredibly witty and a pitch-perfect mockery of well-known

Lennon-McCartney tropes meant to take the piss out of the sacred cow beetles. It is so expertly written and produced that it sounds like something the old John Lennon would have produced to take the piss out of the new John. Lenin. And because of this, it drove John Lennon mad. Here was this little runt in upstate New York doing John Lennon better than John Lennon. And what the fuck? It was powerful stuff and it fueled Mark

David Chapman, who was in the market for a mark. So he locked into the anger and found his own manic utopia into face the music and focused all of his pent-up self-loathing on the former beetle, whom he wants, like Rundgren, idolized. Chapman had been following the Lennon-Rung-Rung-Beefe in the press, and despite his childhood love of the Beatles, he'd chosen to ride for Rungrin. Todd is God! Mark closed his eyes and took in the music. It calmed him. It made him believe in something. Something real. It quieted the army of voices in his head. The voices that told him he was nothing, a nobody. The voices that told him this world was nothing more than a living hell filled with phonies and charlatans. The voices that told him to do it. Do it. Do it.

Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it. Gloria Chapman was on pins and needles. They'd run out of rum and thus, no more mitisies, and probably just as well. But Mark was visibly growing more and more agitated, pacing in front of his new high-fi that was pumping out rung green at high volume. Now pulling off of a brown bag can of fosters, sweat visible on his forehead,

his nerdy glasses sliding down his pasty white nose, his greasy bangs partially obscured, hearing the manic look in his eyes. I'm telling you, Todd Rundgren's music is where it's at. Listen to that. Seriously, listen to that. Mark was working himself into a lather. His friends, if you could call them that, and they were more like acquaintances,

looked on with mild amusement. Gloria was dying inside. She knew where this routine was going, and it wasn't going anywhere good. For the past few months, she'd been on the receiving end of her husband's rants against John Lennon, and they nearly always ended with Mark erupting in violence, and Gloria questioning his wellness.

Mark rode the volume on the high five. Listen to that. Can you feel it? Todd, man. Todd. Todd is God. The Chapman's guests were seated next to each other on the love seat, staring up at Mark. Mowled slightly at gate. The looks on their faces, a mix of shock and amusement. The volume of the music was now deafening.

Mark had stopped pacing for the moment and now stood in front of the record player. He closed his eyes and brought his clasped hands with hands. to his chest. His left foot rooted firmly in the living room Shag Carbony. He attempted to raise his right foot to his inner thigh. The result was a sort of half-ass tree pose. The music blared, and now the Chapman's guests were openly laughing at. Mark was oblivious. A Zendout nerd who'd finally achieved class clown status, albeit from the comfort of his own home, and with his audience laughing for all the wrong reasons. Mark Chapman kept his eyes closed and envisioned a sea of little people celebrating him, giving him a parade. Him, Mark David Chapman from Decatur, Georgia,

now of Oahu, Hawaii. He then felt a wave of happiness wash over him with his next vision, a warm gun in the palm of his hand. It was too much. He lost his balance and teetered over into the high-fi knocking the needle off the record. When the music stopped, Mark was jarred back to reality by the sounds of his two guests, laughing at him, and to the sight of his wife staring at him, not just embarrassed, scared. Mark lost it. The little people in his head erupted into a chorus of disapproval.

The voices were non-stop now, deafening. The world went black. He felt it moving just beyond his thoughts, but saw nothing. Blackness. He heard familiar voices on the other side, but couldn't make out what they were saying, and they quickly trailed off into the distance. Then, a high top.

pitched ringing sound pierced through him, bringing with it a torrent of rage. He felt it well up in his chest. His ears burned. Loud thuds penetrated the piercing ring and the chattering voices in his head. He could feel himself spinning. Faster, faster, louder, loud thuds continuing to break through. He felt his hands. They were wet with something. Blood. The thudding sounds came into focus. They sounded familiar now, like flesh smacking up against something unforgiving. The sound of each new thud brought fresh pain, not emotional pain, physical pain, and as the pain grew, the blackness faded. Mark noticed a pinprick of light and held focus on it. The spinning started to stop, and the pinprick expanded, and Mark followed the light, and the thuds continued until it was all he could hear.

No more voices, no more darkness. Blood was all he could see. He followed the sight of the blood out of the darkness, and it covered the wall of his bathroom. He felt throbbing. He felt throbbing. robbing pain in his hands and looked down at them. They looked more like two country hams than they did hands, bloodied and beat into a pulp from repeated blows to his bathroom wall, the sight of them sickened Mark with shame. He closed his eyes and again saw the gun in his hand, felt that warm feeling of happiness,

and promptly passed out cold on his bathroom floor. Mark David Chapman came to. He found himself sitting alone on his bedroom floor in the lotus position. He'd quieted the voices in his head and crawled out of his head. the blackness. Hell, he even managed to somehow bandage his hands. And now, now his world was calm. The record player in his room, this one was one of those portable suitcase numbers with the built-in speaker, was playing the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band. But not at the normal speed. Mark had sped it up to 45 RPM. And at this increased speed, the record sounded

less like the Beatles and more like the voices in Mark's head. Manic, intense, and sincere. Same. Mark closed his eyes, took it all in, began chanting his new mantra. John Lennon, I'm going to kill you, you phony bastard. John Lennon, I'm going to kill you, you phony bastard. John Lennon, I'm going to kill you, you phony bastard. John Lennon, I'm going to kill you, your phony bastard. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. John Lennon started to come on hinged in 1965.

Unlike his bandmates, the consummate professional and people-pleaser Paul McCartney, or the soulful George Harrison, or the comical Ringo star, John Lennon had deep, dark demons. Beatles fans got their first peek at these demons with the release of the song Help in 1965. The song, from Lenin's perspective, was a literal cry for help. Fame had driven the young star into a corner of self-doubt and alienation, and he was searching for a way out through his music. And luckily for Lennon's fans, this search would continue throughout his tenure in the Beatles,

and the result would be some of the greatest music ever made. But before Lennon called out the walrus or Lucy in the sky, he called out Jesus Christ. In an interview with the London Evening Standard, John Lennon, in an offhand remark said, quote, Christianity will go, but we're more popular than Jesus. I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick. and ordinary. The blowback was intense, especially in America. Fans burned Beatles records. American DJs organized boycotts and protests of the band's concerts. Lennon didn't understand

what all the fuss was about and did his best to explain himself, but the damage was done. The word was out. These weren't just four lovable mob tops singing about teenage innocence anymore. And the outrage over Lennon's Christ's comments would prove to be child's play compared to the backlash over Lennon's involvement with Yoko, the witch. John Lennon left his wife, Cynthia, and their young son Julian, for avant-garde artist Yoko Ono in 1968. Yoko had designed her hostile takeover of the Lennons in order to climb through the ranks of the international pop world.

Being seen on the arm of John Lennon meant prestige, power, and instant fame. Ono was heavy with ambition and light and talent. In 1965, Andy Warhol commented to filmmaker Paul Morrissey that the shameless self-promoter Yoko Ono was, to his great annoyance, quote, always around, always copying someone else's art. But by 1968, it didn't matter. Yoko had cast John London under her spell completely, and he was hopeless. Andy Warhol in his 15 minutes could go pound sand.

Ono had herself a real-life beetle and a lifetime of fame. fortune on the horizon. The tabloids eventually got wind of their affair, and for fans, news of their favorite beetle leaving his perfect family for someone they saw as a no-talent gold-digger did not sit well. John and Yoko didn't care. They submerged themselves into the gooey haze of new love, lived on a diet of champagne, caviar, and heroin, and moved in together into Jimmy Hendrix's old flat at Montague Square. Almost immediately, things were. and south. In the early morning hours of October 18th, 1968, John Lennon received a call from a

Beatles fan employed by London's corrupt drug squad. The inside man tipped John off that his flat was about to be raided by the notorious detective Norman Pilcher. John, naked, and in a haze from the previous night's party, sprung from bed, threw on a robe, and immediately freaked the fuck out. He began rummaging through the house to find and dispose of any and all dope and paraphernalia. The place previously being lived in by Hendricks had John particularly nervous. Who knew which nook or which cranny Jimmy had squirled his stash away in? Heroin. LSD. Cocaine. Hashish. Marijuana. Morphine. Fenmetrazine. Benzid. All the impetamates were eventually rounded up by John while Yoko barked out orders from bed.

Then, at 1155 a.m., the doorbell rate. John was midway through, furiously flushing his stash down the toilet. His anxiety spiked. Yoko went for the door. John hovered above the toilet, shaking a bag of heroin away, called out in his best old lady voice. Who is it? Yoko did the same, but were considerably less humor.

And a female voice from the other side of the front door said it was the postal service for the package. Yoko opened the door a crack, peeked through, realized the woman was no postal worker, and immediately slammed the door shut and took off back toward John in the bathroom. Yoko was screaming, John, the police! John, the police! John was shouting to Yoko, call the solicitor. Cops were now everywhere,

leering in through the windows, yelling to John and Yoko to let them in. John stalled by yelling out that he demanded to see a warrant, all the while continuing to flush more and more drugs down the toilet. Eventually, after John was satisfied that all the drugs were, disposed of and a warrant was produced and he was able to take the piss out of the situation by pantomiming a read-through of the document, John allowed the police to search the flat.

But despite his best efforts, authorities were still able to turn up hashish, weed, methamphetamines, and a half gram of morphine. John and Yoko were busted. London's favorite son had fallen from grace, first over Jesus, now over this witch. It got worse. Following the arrest, John and Yoko decided they were to get married, in Gibraltar, near Spain. They drove from Paris to the Amsterdam Hilton, talked in their beds for a week. The newspaper said the witch had gone to his head.

On April 10, 1970, approximately 11 months after John and Yoko's bed in honeymoon, the Beatles broke up. For Londoners, this was the final nail in Yoko's coffin. Breaking up a family? Oh well, rock stars can be so fickle. It comes with the territory. Drug bus, that's just part of the game, ain't it? Baggism? The fuck was baggism about it anyway.

It doesn't matter. But breaking up the Beatles, that was an unforgivable offense. London had grown hostile to Yoko, so the couple moved to America. And for Lennon, thus began an epic, years-long creative stumble, marred by semi-inspired and consistent musical releases that despite their near misses did more for his fame than for his artistry. The Ono-Lennons loved America, particularly New York City, and New York City loved them right back.

A virtual cavalcade of healers, seekers, revolutionaries, drug dealers, profits and fools all lined up to welcome John and Yoko and to milk them of their celebrity to promote their own pet causes. and the Ono Lenins allowed themselves to get swept up in the hippie-dippy madness out on the fringes. They donated their time to freeing the Revolutionary and MC5 manager John Sinclair from prison who was unfairly sentenced to 10 years for selling two joints to an undercover cop. They became enamored of the violent revolutionary group, the Weather Underground, and of course they partied, took lots of drugs, and made music.

And eventually, the relationship morphed from corporate. 24-7 love it to a more traditional partnership. Yoko took control of the finances and strategically plotted all professional moves, creative and otherwise, and John did, well, whatever the hell he wanted, provided Yoko said it was okay. But by 1973, the relationship was hitting the skids. Yoko was restless and eager to ignite an affair with either one or both of her gay interior decorators, or possibly her new guitar player.

But Yoko wasn't looking for anything serious, just a dalliance, a break from her husband, who despite being the biggest rock star on the planet, was super needy and required Yoko to be more of a mother than a lover. Hold up for a second. I know the rock star needing to be mothered thing is exactly the same as the Sid and Nancy dynamic from episode 2 of Disgraceland, but I swear it's 100% true with John and Yoko and totally freaky. And look it up for yourself. In any event, the mothering took its toll on Yoko. She didn't want to leave John.

She couldn't leave John. Going out on her own and starting over, financially and creatively, was out of the question. But she needed a break. So she decided to send John away, out of her hair and away from New York City to Los Angeles. But setting a man like John Lennon loose into the wilds of 1973, L.A. was a bad idea. He needed a minder, someone to keep him. heathered to his life back with Yoko in Manhattan. So, Yoko, the good wife, decided to give her husband John a going away present, a girlfriend.

May Pang, the Lennon's 23-year-old assistant, and Yoko's mind would make for the perfect pawn. She was young, attractive, scrappy, and easily manipulated. Plus, Yoko knew John was eager to jump in the sack with her. Yoko saw the way John ogled her. May Pang, a woman of Chinese descent, from Spanish Harlem was like the bizarro world Yoko. She was funny, lacking in airs, unrefined, and came with a thick outer borough accent and sexy downtown look.

Compared to Yoko, she wasn't so heavy. To John, Yoko was the anvil. May was the feather. Plus, the young impressionable music fanatic was in love with John the Beatle. However, at first, May didn't take to the idea of accompanying John to L.A. for an undetermined amount of time. She may have been secretly in love with her hero, but she had a conscience.

The dude was married and to her boss. But Yoko's pitch was delicate, and despite being kind of icky, it was convincing. Eventually, May caved, and when her and John consummated their new relationship, the sex, clumsy, and forced at first, quickly became quite the opposite. John and Yoko's sex life had gone cold years ago, but now with May, John was insatiable. And May, for her part, genuinely cared for John. And thus, the sex was dynamite. So John Lennon and May Pang decided to get lost together.

And for a weekend anyway. A weekend in the City of Angels. A weekend that would be filled with sex, drugs, rock and roll, and lots of violence. A weekend that would last approximately one year and six months. A lost weekend. Thanks for checking out part one of John Lennon. Disgraceland, Part 2 is available now in your feet. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.

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