DISGRACELAND - John Lennon (Pt. 2): “The phony must die, said the catcher in the rye.”

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 obsessed with his contradictory hero, as well as 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 second chapter 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 ⁠TikTokSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. John Lennon, his state of mind in the 1970s, and the circumstances surrounding his death, are so complex that two episodes are needed to properly tell this story. If you're just getting hip to this now, I suggest you hit pause and go back to Disgraceland Episode 13, or Part 1 of the John Lennon's story, where we discuss the voices in Mark David Chapman's head, his obsession with Lennon's rival, the musician Todd Rundgren, John and Yoko's

drug bust, and May Pang. In this episode, we finally get around to some great solo John Lennon music, unlike the music played at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for my Melotron, called Bolero Clarinets Low, MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to midnight train to Georgia by Gladys Night and the Pips. And why would I play you that specific slice of leaving train cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on October 31st, 1973, and that was the day that John Lennon found himself hung over in Los Angeles, estranged from his wife and subconsciously trying to drink himself to death

before an assassin would complete the job seven years later. On this episode, a lost weekend, leaving trains, a determined assassin, and a dead beetle. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. In October 1973, John Lennon and his rambling concubine, May Pang, landed in Los Angeles and quickly took to the town. A squad of hard-partying rock and rollers was pulled together for John to pal around with. Among them, the notorious Keith Moon of the Who, Rolling Stone, known sax player Bobby Keyes, a.k.a. the only man alive

who could keep up with Keith Richards. Songwriter, Harry Nilsson, who at the moment looked as if he'd spent more time swimming laps in a pool of Brandy Alexander's than he did writing songs in a recording studio. And of course, the notorious record producer, Phil Spector,

who is lording over the scene in his capacity as producer of Lenin's newest project, an album of early 50s standards that had influenced John and his teddy boy days, called rock and roll. The recording sessions were a violent drug and alcohol-fueled mess that eventually ended with a gun-wielding Phil Spector

and his goons literally taking John Lennon hostage, blindfolding him and tying him up in one of Spector's bedrooms to allow Phil the time necessary to steal away the session's master recordings, which would then not surface for years to come. And when not recording, things weren't much different. Lennon drank himself into a stupid day, Nights were spent either trashing the homes of celebrity friends who had generously allowed John and May to crash

or out on the town looking for trouble. Orgies with strangers, fights with loud-mouthed fans, and drugged out late-night jams with any number of the top-tier pop stars in town. Most notably, an impromptu cocaine-fueled session with Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr. accounts of the session have Paul playing drums,

and Ringo, the drummer, playing the Coke spoon. The party in Los Angeles for John Lennon never stopped, but he longed for Yoko. When he wasn't busy drinking himself to death, he was on the phone begging Yoko to take him back, but she wasn't having it. New York City without John was just too much fun. She was putting together new music

and was eager to let John know that her new guitar player, David Spinoza was an ace in the studio and in the sack, and that she'd been properly shagged by the Axeman in a way that John hadn't been able to manage in years. John couldn't take it. He dove into the deep end of the Brandy Alexander Pool with Harry Nilsson, and the two took to the town with May and tow. The destination was Doug Weston's famous Trubidor Nightclub,

where on this evening, a celeb-filled crowd was taking in the Smothers' Brother's triumphant return to the stage. So naturally, John entered the crowd with a Kotech sanitary napkin stuck to his forehead and made a spectacle of himself. Someone in the crowd yelled out, Where is Yoko? And John replied, Sucking Ringo's cock! The three were quickly ushered into the VIP section,

where a group of annoyed celebrities, including Pam Greer and Peter Loffrey, did their best to ignore them. Orders were placed for triple milkshakes, aka Brandy Alexander's, with three times the cognac. And when they arrived, John shot his down in one gulp, looked up at Peter Lofford, who was glancing down at him with that uppity foe Kennedy's stare. And John grabbed Lofford's drink out of his hand

and down that in a single gulp. And then he ordered another round. And when the Smothers Brothers began their act, John and Harry started singing their own competing tune from the VIP section, loud, like drunken sailors from the Liverpool docks. And Lofford told John to cool it. John's response,

Fuck you. I'm John. Lenin, he screamed out to no one and everyone at the same time. The crowd started booing Lenin. The Smothers Brothers soldiered on. Lenin, a natural heckler, yelled to the stage, Hey, Smothers Brothers, fuck a cow. A waitress was dispatched to try and get hold of the situation.

And when she did, Lenin asked her, Do you know who I am? And she replied, some asshole with a cortex on his head? That sealed it. Lennon and Nilsen erupted in song again. More booze from the crowd. more profanity from Lennon. Club's security descended and grabbed hold of John to escort him out,

and he resisted and started swinging his fists blindly. One of them caught Smothers' Brothers' manager Ken Fitz in the chin, and Peter Lofford, who having made his bones and drunken celebrity meleys like this with his BFF Frank Sinatra, and brother-in-law Teddy Kennedy knew exactly what to do. Grab the little bastard by the neck and get him the hell out of there. Fast. So that's what happened.

Lofford in a group of club security and waitstaff, grabbed Lennon and pulled him, kicking and screaming through the pissed-off crowd who rained punches down on the ex-beetal as he was dragged past them and eventually thrown out onto Santa Monica Boulevard, where he continued to blindly and violently lash out at anyone who came near him.

Eventually John, Harry, and May found their way into the back of their limousine and took off for the Rainbow Bar and Grill, where, upon entering the now iconic L.A. hotspot, John Lennon, the ex-beetal, Mr. Gougoukuch, the counterculture voice of a generation, Mr. Give Peace a Chance, drunkenly and violently, stumbled into none other than Todd Rundgren. And Rundgren was eager to connect with his hero, but Lennon, true to form that night, rudely blew him off.

Todd Rundgren, dismayed, watched John Lennon harassed the waitstaff in between sips of his Brandy Alexander's until he eventually slouched into his booth and passed out. Rundgren couldn't believe his eyes. The John Lennon he was watching was no rock and roll deity. He wasn't even a working class hero. He was thick and ordinary. What a fraud. The sun broke above Central Park West and shone brightly into the kitchen window of the

Ono Lennon home in Manhattan's Dakota apartments. John was up early, making breakfast for his five-year-old son, Sean. Mornings with Sean were sacred. Afternoons were a different story. While Sean was being tended to by his governess, and the Ono-Lennon fortune was being tended to by Yoko in her office downstairs, John locked himself in his bedroom with his cats. And he watched television, smoked tiestick,

tried not to snort heroin, chain-smoked cigarettes. He binged on sweets and obsessed over his weight. He read his horoscope, ignored Paul McCartney's call, and masturbated out of boredom, usually to the thought of journalist Barbara Walters, or if he was feeling nostalgic to his old flame, the young May Pang. Or if it was a Wednesday, his masseuse Kimmy would come by and lay one of her patented two-minute house-call handjobs on him. But today wasn't a Wednesday, and it wasn't yet afternoon either.

John and Sean sat at their kitchen counter, eating, goofing off, and listening to the radio, which almost always played music or classical. never pop. But this morning was different. One of the servants had left the dial tuned to WLIR the night before, so when John flipped on the radio in the morning, what he heard had him shook, rattled, and rolling inside with jealousy. The hell was this? Fucking Springsteen. This little bridge and tunnel rat was beating Lennon at his own game. Heavy-hearted romantic cynicism dressed up as pop. Lennon's double fantasy, his first record of real creative consequence since the Beatles was an earnest, hard on his sleeve owed to family and wholesomeness.

Initial reviews were mixed, and its first single, just like starting over, was stalled on the charts at number eight. And here comes Jersey's own wannabe Zimmerman, barreling up the charts with his excellent single, Hungry Heart, from the deeply rooted double album, The River. John was second-guessing himself. He thought that maybe he shouldn't have made double fantasy the sugary concept album that it was. Or shit, maybe you shouldn't even have included the Yoko songs. It was like pulling teeth from a pit bull trying to get her to singing key anyway.

He left Sean to his cereal, picked up the phone and dialed up his producer, Jack Douglas. Have you heard this? He held the phone to the kitchen radio speaker. It's incredible, Jack. What am I doing? Dicking around with songs about milk and honey. It's 1980, Jack.

And we're going to L.A., book a studio. We're going to make a real record, a real John Lennon record. Call the guys in Cheap Trick. I'll call Ringo. I get a great song for him. Nobody told me there'd be days like these. And Jack, we're going to re-record strawberry fields. You hear me?

We're going to re-record strawberry fields the way that it was meant to be recorded. John slammed the phone down, looked at Sean, took his piece fingers to the insides of his outer lips, and pulled his mouth apart wide like a big fish while crossing his eyes. As Sean laughed so hard, milk's spurn. out of his nose. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. John Lennon eyed the stack of morning papers and magazines on the chair in the corner of his kitchen. Ah, it's here, he thought to himself.

He pushed aside the New York Times and the National Enquirer and pulled up the latest edition of Esquire Magazine. In it, a hit job that he knew was coming. An article entitled, John Lennon, where are you? In which the frustrated writer, unable to corner John for an Indian during his recent house dad years, used public record information to piece together a picture of John's life in the latter half of the 70s. And the result was a scorching article detailing the Ono-Lennon $150 million large S and an unfair depiction of John as a middle-aged businessman,

more concerned with tax loopholes for his real estate holdings than he was with peace and love or making music. And John really didn't care. After all, it was Yoko who did. take care of the business. The article at least made it seem like he wore the pants in the family. But someone else did care. 5,000 miles away, Mark David Chapman read the same article and burned with rage. The article confirmed everything he already suspected of his former hero, John Lennon,

that he was a fraud, a phony. It's easy to imagine no possessions? Yeah, no shit, Jacoono. It's easy for you. You have everything. I have nothing. I'm a nobody. I mean nothing, yet I'm the one who really cares, giving all my clothes to charity.

I'm the one who's living an authentic life, not like the phonies. I'm not the fucking hypocrite here, man. The voices in Mark's head started to gather. The phony must die, said the catcher in the ride. Mark felt himself moving, finally, with a purpose. It was time. He bought a one-way plane ticket to New York City and packed light. Last night, the wife said,

Poor boy, when you're dead. You don't take nothing with you, but you're. soul. Think. Where did you put those hollow points? The phony must die, said the catcher in the rye. And on the plane, Chapman read and reread the Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger's classic tale of teenage angst and alienation. It was the only thing that comforted Mark these days. In his mind, the book was hardwired to the idea of murdering John Lennon. And just like the book's author J.D. Salinger, Mark David Chapman would call out the phonies of the world, but he'd do it with a bullet and in his mind he thought he'd bring attention to the book that spoke so deeply to him,

and thus make the world a little better of a place, a little less phony, a little easier to take. It was one of the rare thoughts that calmed him and quieted his internal strength. The gnawing notion that he was a loser, a nobody, and killing the world's biggest phony would make him a hero. It would make him a somebody, and it would provide an escape from this hellish world. Once Lennon was dead, Chapman would be a hero, and he believed, because of this, he would literally be sucked into the pages of The Catcher in the Rye, and a new chapter would be written about him.

Chapter 27. His problems would be over. He would no longer be, Mark David Chapman, the loser, the overweight nerd who couldn't get a real job, who couldn't get laid even by his own wife, who couldn't even properly kill himself. Killing Lenin meant killing Chapman. Mark David Chapman would cease to exist. He would finally become Holding Caulfield. For so went the voices in his head.

The phony must die, said the catcher in the rye. After arriving in New York City, Mark David Chapman eventually took his place outside the Dakota apartments at West 7th 2nd Street and Central Park West, alongside the regular rabble of London autograph seekers, clad in a black trench coat and red scarf, clinging to a sealed copy of double. fantasy under his arm and a dog-eared copy of the catcher in the rye in his one hand.

Happiness warmed his other hand from the touch of his gun, a stub-nosed 38 in his pocket. Bang, bang, shoot, shoot. At 5 p.m., John and Yoko exited the Dakota for their waiting limo. The sidewalk lit up with excitement. The voices in Mark's head exploded. He was paralyzed. Here was his moment. He prayed to Satan to give him the strength to go through with what he came there.

but the sight of the John Lennon approaching diminished him for a moment anyway to a teenage Betelmania fanboy Chapman silently held the copy of double fantasy out in front of John and John grabbed it without making eye contact and signed John Lennon in 1980 on its cover. He then looked up at the fat-faced fan and with a smile handed him the album and said, Here, is this what you want? Chapman had no words, so Lennon bounded away into the limo and took off for a row. recording session with yoga. Mark was beside himself with excitement. For a moment, the thought of killing Lennon was completely gone. John Lennon had spoken to him. John Lennon had asked him, Mark

David Chapman, a question. He felt for a second anyway that he was somebody. But the feeling quickly evaporated. The voices in his head were too strong. And the phone he must die, said the catcher in the ride. And Mark prayed to God to give him the strength to not do what he had come to New York to do. And then, again, he prayed to Satan to give him the strength to do what he had come to New York to do. And the voices grew louder. And Mark settled in outside the Dakota and played the waiting game. He knew John will be back sooner or later. And this time, that's when Holden would make his mark. At 10.50 p.m. on December 8th, 1980, John Lennon's limo pulled up outside the Dakota. Yoko hopped out first. As she passed, Mark David Schen,

Chapman, he gave her an innocent, hello. And Lenin gave him a suspect look, one that said, who are you, you big, fat, greasy meatball? Why are you still hanging around outside my house? Don't you have a life? Fucking loser. The voices came to life. Big, bold, loud inside Mark's head.

The phony must die, said the catcher in the rye. The phony must die, said the catcher in the rye. The phony must die, said the catcher in the rye. The phony must die, said the catcher in the rye. And as John Lennon passed by and headed under the Dakota's archway, the coward Mark David Chapman, in a fury, clumsily crouched into a combat stance and whipped the stump nose 38 out of his pocket. He took aim with two hands at John's back and squeezed off five shots in rapid succession. When the first two bullets hit John's back, the force of them swung him around toward his assassin.

And the next two pierced his shoulder and flung him backward into the door of the Dakota's outdoor security station where he turned around again and staggered helplessly toward a shocked security guard, collapsed and began to bleed out. Police arrived quickly, and it was immediately clear how grave the wounds were, so the two uniforms hoisted Lennon onto their shoulders, carried him out onto the sidewalk, then to the curb, and crammed him into a squad car taking off for nearby Roosevelt Hospital. Once in the car, they realized he was dying in their back seat,

and one uniform asked the soon to be martyr. Do you know who you are? By the time they arrived at the hospital, he'd lost 80% of his blood. John Lennon died just before midnight. He didn't put up much of a fight. After shooting John Lennon in the back, the coward Mark David Chapman

simply sat on the sidewalk and took in the developing chaos around him. He fingered his car, copy of the Catcher in the Rye and waited to be transported into the pages of the book. And when that, of course, didn't happen. He simply sat calmly, waiting for the police to take him away. The voices were all gone now, or at least quieted for the moment. When the police brought him in and started to process him, the heat of the Pact 20th Precinct Station House on Manhattan's Upper West Side began to get to Mark. He was allowed to take off his jacket and sweater, and so he

did, and he sat, awaiting his uncertain future, handcuffed to a desk, sweating, and his greasy dungarees in two tight food-stained Todd Rundgren Hermit of Mink Hollow promo t-shirt. Still, very much the fat, pathetic loser that he was before he senselessly shot and killed John Lennon. But by murdering John Lennon, Chapman had accomplished one of his objectives. He'd managed to claim an identity for himself. He may have still been a fat and pathetic loser, but he was forever the fat, pathetic loser who killed John Lennon. The irony, of course, is that he killed John Lennon at the exact point in time when Lennon himself was starting to finally reclaim his own identity and settle into his 40s. He'd become less reclusive, less dependent on

Yoko, and after a decade of bad behavior missed creative opportunities, excess and paranoia. John Lennon was quite literally starting over and downright buoyant with the thought of what the 80s might bring. By 1980, John Lennon had locked into a creative voice that suited his authentic self. He'd managed to find some balance between being a family man and an international pop star. Who knew what the future held for him in Yoko? All he knew was that his love for his son Sean was deep, true, inspiring, and helped him focus. It put everything in perspective, who he was as a man, and artist. It even helped him refocus the love he had for his oldest and sometimes his strange son, Julian, from his previous marriage to Cynthia. And so, there were more records to make.

Double fantasy proved to him that he still had it. He was inspired, confident. Running and hiding was no longer an option. No more running off for lost weekends in Hollywood. No more lost years running away to hide out in the Dakota. Running, hiding, and getting lost were no longer tenable lines of defense for John because the pressure of constantly running away from himself had taken its toll. John ran from the game because he knew he wasn't good at playing it. The game where celebrities let the public's perception of them define them and win the day no matter what. No, John Lennon couldn't truck with that. He needed to tell people exactly what he was feeling at that moment, no matter how much it may have contradicted his prior actions or statements. Hypocrisy be damned, authenticity, truth,

in the moment, it was everything. And to many, before he was martyred anyway, this was confusing. It certainly was to Mark David Chapman, who interpreted all of John's conflicting behavior as being disingenuous or fake. It's a simple interpretation. It's the interpretation of an adolescent, an interpretation that an angsty teenager might have, an angsty teenager like Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye.

The phony must die, said the Catcher in the Rye. But when John Lennon and Mark David Chapman finally ran into each other, for John, there was no need to run anymore. No need to run from the press. No need to run from his own celebrity. He'd found himself. He knew who he was.

He was John Lennon, the Beatle, the raconteur, the revolutionary, the husband, the father, when he was dead. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by

yours truly and is produced in partnership with double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a disgrace land all-access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of disgrace land ad free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episode special audio collections and early access to merchandise and events visit disgracelampod

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