DISGRACELAND - John Lennon: Violence, Protests, Provoking the FBI, and Pissing off the President

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

In the early 1970s, John Lennon was suspected of conspiring to disrupt an American political convention and contributing to a paramilitary terrorist organization. Authorities took notice. So much so that the President of the United States took action to have the so-called “smart Beatle” deported. Lennon’s politics were way more violent and revolutionary than simply imagining all the people living life in peace and harmony. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. This episode was originally published on June 29, 2021. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, 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.

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The stories about John Lennon and his foray into politics are insane. The one-time lovable beetle aligned himself with violent revolutionary. was suspected of conspiring to disrupt a national political convention. Freed and unjustly jailed dopehead was alleged to have contributed financially to a paramilitary terrorist organization, and he survived a home invasion that eerily forecast his own shooting. John Lennon's turn, as Rock's most famous revolutionary, was short-lived. The highest levels of the United States federal government worried about the pop star's influence on American youth and combated his radical politics by attempting to deport the ex-Beatle.

But before these events, John Lennon, of course, made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Portly Prouler, MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Family Affair by Sly and the Family Stone. And why would I play you that specific Slugler, of riot going on cheese, could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on December 10th, 1971. And that was the day John Lennon took the stage with known radical Jerry Rubin,

in front of thousands of fans in Detroit, drawing the wrath of none other than Richard Nixon, the president of the United States. On this episode, radical politics, violent revolutionaries, a home invasion, a riot going on. and John Lennon. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is this Graceland. As far as the eye could see, freaks.

They filled Pontiac Stadium. 15,000 strong, bombers and balladeers, radicals, all. Detroit, Michigan, 1971. Richard Nixon's silent majority was retreating. The freaks were assented. Turns out, violence worked. Martin Luther King Jr. was wrong. Non-violence was submissive.

You want change? Post a panther up outside a police station with a couple live rounds. Ready. Aim. Revolution. Jerry Rubin's yippies had grown up from street theater Groucho Marxist to guerrilla warriors. Detroit in 1971 wasn't like Chicago in 1968. The Democratic National Convention was a coming out party for Jerry Rubin and his fellow revolutionaries, the new left.

Hello America. Do you know who your children are? 1,500 rioting in the street. Mock Zieg Giles, mockery trial, not guilty for incitement, guilty of contempt, three years overturned on appeal. Jerry Rubin beat the system. And to John Lennon, that meant something, which is why he and his wife, Yoko Ono, were in Detroit that night. To free Jerry Rubin's buddy, John Sinclair. Sinclair, the sort of poet, half-ass manager of the MC5,

and founding member of the White Panther Party, the anti-racist brothers in arms to Bobby Seale's Black Panthers, had been railroaded. At least that was the revolutionary wrap. Busted for dope, two joints. Sinclair was given a 10-year sentence. Ten for two, went the sloganeering. John Lennon cooked up the catchphrase himself. Ten years, two joints.

Harsh, right? I guess. What Jerry Rubin and John Lennon left out of their rhetoric was that Sinclair, prior to the bus that sent him away for a decade, had already been busted numerous times for his flagrant refusal to stop smoking pot in public while on probation, for previous dope arrests. Say what you will about the legality of marijuana, but stupid is stupid.

Didn't matter. John Sinclair, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seal, the tide was turning in their favor, at least in Detroit. Despite the arrest of a couple white panthers for the bombing of a selective service office, despite the conviction of two Black Panthers for the murder and torture of an informant alleged to have been committed on orders from Bobby Seal, and despite the violence encoded in Jerry Rubin's early 70s rhetoric. In 1971, the revolutionaries were gaining ground in the mainstream. In Detroit, they flipped the city council and won control of the city's legally constituted government.

It was the coup of all coups for Jerry Rubin, who was now officially America's most effective revolutionary. Detroit's city council sat members directly aligned with Rubin's radical new left causes. So as far as John Lennon was concerned, he was aligning himself with a winner. No matter what the audience in mind. Pottyak Stadium looked like on that night. The imagined counterculture utopia was, in reality, a stoned, fair weather fan, opportunistic dystopia.

College kids ripped on acid tuckinjohn-Sinclair blues. Predatory drug dealers roaming the aisles, relieving suburban wasteoids of their allowances, breaking off bricks of hash and bagged bowls of butt, motorheads crushing cold cans of hams and old style, cruising for school night trim. Vietnam vets home from a war that didn't want a wage in a country that didn't recognize. hooked on heroin a drug they didn't understand, nodding out in the cheap seats. All of them forced to sit through half-ass hippie concert planning.

Long, drawn out breaks between musical artists, a stellar undercard to John Yoko's headlining slot, consisting with Stevie Wonder, Bob Seeger, Phil Oaks, and Archie Shep, and bored to tears by the long-winded speeches and political ramblings of Ruben and his ilk. Bobby Seale delivered, though. Bobby knew that when it came to speeches, you needed a hidden where they lived,

with rock and roll, soul power. He spit Cassius Clay melodies over V.I. Lennon chords. Entertaining and motivating and as such, subversive as fuck. And by the time John and Yoko took the stage, self-contained on methadone and cocaine cocktails, it was past 2 a.m. John Sinclair was sleeping in his cell, many in the crowd no doubt envious of him by this point,

yet the band played on. Showtime. John Lennon, Beetle John. in the flesh, in a rare concert performance. It was worth the price of admission, worth the weight, worth the coming hangover, worth the flashbacks and well worth the political gobbly gook being shouted to the rafters. It was even worth enduring John's wife on stage with her spine-piercing singing style, a real-life beetle.

Except John Lennon wasn't a beetle anymore. He was a revolutionary. He'd taken up arms for the cause, whatever that actually was. In his mind, he was fighting the good fight, and he and his new brothers and sisters were winning. John Lennon didn't bet on losing horses. He learned his lesson with that ass-grabbing Maharishi a few years earlier. False profits didn't play.

Pop-starred and was overrated. He'd been there. He'd done that. What did it get him? A mansion in the woods west of London? A tax bill larger than the GDP of a small nation? Money he couldn't spend fast enough guilt over his success, alienation, apathy. This, the cause, Ruben, Bobby Shore, even Sinclair and his two joints.

This was the next big thing. John was certain. More than primal scream therapy, more than LSD, more than chasing birds across America through a haze of amphetamines in Zimmerman's grass. Now was the time for real change. John could taste it. The future was blinding,

which made the past invisible, which was the point. John Lennon wasn't the only one with his sights on the future. In the crowd that night, a handful of square white men circling their gaze upon the stage through government-issued binoculars. If the crowd wasn't so stoned, they would have made the men instantly by their white socks,

dark shoes, floods, and high and tight haircuts. Squares, Hoover's men, government men, FBI. They're on orders from Bob Haldeman himself, Nixon's chief of staff and head ballbuster. John Lennon wasn't some ordinary junkie folk singer. He was a beetle and won, if not the biggest pop stars on the planet. But when he came to the youth, a demographic that Richard Nixon had little sway with, John Lennon's influence was immeasurable. Therefore, John Lennon's political motivation was highly suspect. What was he doing?

Exactly, what was his angle? He wasn't even American. He was English, a foreigner, on a visitor visa, granted entry under American soil into this great country by the generosity of the federal government alone, and here he was, protesting that same government alongside known violent revolutionaries. If John Lennon would go to this extreme publicly,

What could he possibly be up to in private? There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man.

A group of women discover they've all dated. the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target.

He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us.

I'm Millie de Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the criterion closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, gripe I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore.

It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is.

Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know,

but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything. And me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of showed me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It was worse than Nixon's stuages could have imagined. After John Lennon appeared at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally, unbelievably, John Sinclair was freed. It worked. John Lennon was just as surprised as Richard Nixon. John Sinclair was released from jail to appeal his conviction on orders from the Michigan Supreme Court on the Monday after the freedom rally. John Lennon's public appeal, along with the leftists now ensconced inside city and state government, had come together to win freedom for Sinclair. But it was more than a win for a lowly pothead,

harshly convicted for smoking a weed that did little more than make him lazy and uninteresting. It was a symbolic win for the revolution, and it emboldened John Lennon. He doubled down on his political activities, appearing at the Apollo Theatre benefit for the Harlem Six, as well as at another benefit for Attica state victims. He marched in the streets of New York for the IRA

and publicly askewed his British Welsh heritage in favor of his Irish roots to better identify with the imperialized people of his Greens, England. And he marched Bobby Seal and Jerry Rubin out in front of a nationally televised audience on the Mike Douglas show, publicly proclaiming his support

of the Black Panther's anti-nationalism, nodding along in agreement to Seale's stated goal of using the Black Panther's organized philosophy of intercommunalism to redistribute American wealth. The irony, John Lennon, one of the richest musicians in the world and a white man sitting next to Bobby Seal in support of wealth distribution, a man whose primary business venture, Apple Corps, existed for the main purpose of sheltering his multi-million dollar income from tax collectors, taxes that would have paid for government social services for the underprivileged back home in this country had he actually paid them. And of course, here in America, John Lennon paid no taxes either yet.

Here he was, as far as Nixon was concerned, blasting his anti-American message out over American broadcast towers built with real American labor, performed by hardworking Americans who actually did pay their taxes. The hypocrisy, if it all, was enough to spin Richard Nixon into a late-night Scotch-fueled rant in the White House. Something had to be done. John Lennon was paranoid by nature, but this was something else. The clicks he heard when he picked up the phone. Someone was listening. The squares on the park benches. Their legs crossed, their white socks showing, their bespectacled heads, peering over the sports page of the daily news.

Someone was watching. The men he saw an inconspicuous sedans traveling a safe two cars back from whatever New York cab he was riding in. Someone was following him. A change of scenery was needed, something less conspicuous. And the five-star aristocratic digs as the St. Regis Hotel would no longer do. So he rented a small apartment in the West Village. After all, revolutions never come from the top down.

They come from the bottom, which is where John and Yoko seemed to be racing toward. No sooner did they arrive at their modest new digs at 155.5.5. Bank Street did they renounce their possessions. John wanted to give up his quote-unquote possessions complex, perhaps sensing the hypocrisy of supporting the Black Panthers' call for wealth redistribution while living off of his and his former bandmates' tax-sheltered rock star largesse. Jerry Rubin spread the word. John and Yoko had opened their checkbook. At their New Bank Street apartment, they received the great unwashed freak community. All were invited to reveal their cause or their plight and be granted an audience with the new king and queen of the counterculture. John and Yoko, who took their meetings, as was their famous custom, in bed, often naked.

Ex-cons down on their luck librarians, black panthers, white panthers, Jerry Rubin's next generation of campus warriors, the newly christened zippies, any and all, hard luck cases, downed with the cause, came palms up, and John and Yoko did not disappoint. They put their money, or John's money part of it anyway, where their mouths were. John identified with all of them. In private, his political rhetoric took a darker turn, became more violent, even to the point of shocking Jerry Rubin, who later said that John used to joke about his pacifist's past and blame it all on Yoko. According to Rubin, Lenin said she's the one who's into the peace and love. John was pissed, particularly at the cop. Revolutionary violence was becoming an obsession.

And they were all out to keep the common man down. The cops, the politicians didn't matter. It was the same as it was back at school. Do this. Don't do that. The man stomped the spirit right out of you, wore you down to a nub, molded you into the soulless automaton that the lower class you were born into demanded. And God forbid you were born in the wrong part of the world in Burma or Vietnam or Ireland.

And then you were royally fucked. Whatever the means. As long as the people were free, free from the world. their oppressors, as long as John was freed, free from his past. Jerry Rubin was right, fuck them all. Bobby Seale cinched it via brother Malcolm by any means necessary. John could get with that, and he was in a position to do so, which is why when an Irish arms dealer turned up at his door looking for a place to lay off his stash, John allegedly put him in touch with a contact who connected the arms dealer with the IRA front, Northern Irish aide, an organization to which

John Lennon would eventually assign the royalties for his song, Luck of the Irish. The Front funded the provisional IRA, the paramilitary division known as one of the most vicious, violent domestic terrorist organizations on the planet, which is why Lenin's biographer alleged that the Smart Beetle gave Jerry Rubin Zippe's two grand in cash to finance the violent disruption of the Democratic and Republican conventions in Miami that year. The exact same type of violent crime, Jerry Rubin and the Chicago 7 cooked up at the Democratic National Convention back in 1968. But Miami, in 72, was going to be even bigger, badder, more spectacle, more violence, guaranteed. Violence is what really got the press's attention.

Violence is what brought the revolution into Middle America's living rooms. Violence is what brought legitimate change. Miami, 72, Nixon's newest coronation, Jerry Rubin and John Lennon had big plans. But then, there came a hard knock on the door. John opened it. Two squares, dark suits, white socks, INS men, immigration and naturalization service. They handed John Papers. The prose was bleak and bold-faced courier font. Mr. John Lennon, your deportation from the United States is hereby demanded. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess. with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with

her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own. hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm

Millie DeCirko. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast. Dear Movies, I love you. From the exactly. Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra P and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites.

New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. Just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves.

My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This was exactly what the White House feared. Thousands of protesters making their way from all over the country to the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami.

It's why they were trying to toss John London out of the country, deport him. His case dragged on, and that was fine with authorities, in court or out of the country. It didn't matter. Either way, John Lennon was neutered, which was what the Feds wanted. Word was John Lennon and Jerry Rubin, the rabble-rouser who had so successfully disrupted the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and gotten away with it, were planning on hosting a counter-convention to be held outside the RNC's stale affair, attracting all the freaks, Vietnam War protesters, Black Panthers, White Panthers, hippies, yippies, hippies,

and whatever other revolutionary rabble could find its way down to the bottom of the country. That couldn't happen. A counterconvention would be a disaster for Nixon. Just as he took the stage to make his case for four more years, the lens of the press would be equally trained on the sideshow across the street, protesting not only Nixon's presidency, but demonstrating in support of the charges that Richard Nixon was nothing more than a war criminal. John Lennon, Jerry Rubin, any success in Miami for the two of them, meant failure for Nixon. It was zero-sum.

So the federal hounds were unleashed onto John Lennon in the form of a trumped-up deportation case. What did John Lennon expect? Did he really expect to go up against the president of the United States and his goons, Bob Halthamon and G. Gordon Liddy? With questionable immigrant status, a convicted doper, a known junkie, did he expect to call Nixon in the establishment out on a repeat? basis in public, and to fund Black Panthers, White Panthers, IRA fronts, and still be allowed to stay in this country and continue to do so. Say what you will about the righteousness of John

Lennon's actions, but his hubris was monumental. The fact that the aggressive move by the Fed surprised him speaks to just how far he had his head up his own ass in 1972. The federal government's gambit did what it was supposed to do, tied John up in court effectively sidelining him from the He wouldn't dare fuck with Nixon in Miami while on trial over his status as a legal immigrant. Except, it didn't matter. With or without John Lennon, the revolution was on. Jerry Rubin was determined. Whether or not an actual counter-political convention would still take place remained to be seen.

That required planning, even if you were just going to nominate a real-life pig to run against Richard Nixon, which was the rumor. And planning wasn't a strong suit of the cause. Regardless so, the revolution had arrived in Miami, And shit was about to go off. August 22nd, 1972, Richard Nixon's nomination day. A second term. John Wayne on hand to welcome Tricky Dick. Hanoi Jane and Flamingo Park around the corner from the Miami Beach Convention Center

on a small makeshift stage under the dank stank of grass speaking to anti-war demonstrators. All quiet on the southern front for the moment. Peaceful protest. Pester launched a brick at marching delegates. The delegates ran up and not so fast. Rudy and Ave was now the official piggy walk of shame. Protesters were going to force the delegates to walk the gauntlet. Demonstrators and ghostly white death mask taunted the delegates, screaming,

there's blood on your hands and murderers all. Other protesters in Richard Nixon mask smeared with red paint, blood, clashed violently with police and photographers. The cops worried. The plan they heard was for the demonstrators to take the convention hall at the exact moment Nixon was taking the nomination. Disrupt the whole fucking thing right there on national TV. and the cops moved in in in riot gear.

There were now 3,000 protesters flooding the streets. Miami-Dade's fine a strategically positioned school bus a six-deep in front of the convention center's entrance. The protesters advanced, launching rocks and bricks at cops and more arriving delegates. They pounced on dignitaries, their limousines, and cop cars. An escaping limo ran over a Vietnam vet.

More chance. Fuck, no, we won't go. Cops, hoars, there's the door. Bobby Seal, undeterred by being jailed after the 68 riot, took to the street with more of that cash's clay flow, leading a chant of one, two, three, four, we don't want your fucking war. Delegates were horrified, clutching pearls and pissing pants.

Pencil-nake young Republicans fired back with bricks of their own. Protesters set American flags aflame and smashed windows of neighboring businesses, and then... The Couté Gras. Jerry Rubin's Groucho Marxist protest theory come to life. There, in the middle of Meridian Avenue, a circus elephant, marching, surrounded by protesters walking in step and pulling a coffin toward the convention center.

It was great theater, but it did little to physically advance the rioters' cause. The cops held the rioters back from entering the convention center. Nixon was nominated without an eruption. Still, the national press covered it miles agape and blasted the images back all over the country across the nightly news. At the end of the day, more than 200 demonstrators were arrested. one news report closed with this item. As police packed a group of violent demonstrators into a yellow police van, the demonstrators were said to break into song singing the Beatles,

we all live in a yellow submarine. Watching the report back home in New York on his prized possession, his color television, John Lennon thought, for fuck's sake, this was a bloody mess. And if his hands were seen as being all over it, he'd be tossed from the country for sure. The timing for him couldn't have been worse. His deportation case was, shockingly going well.

Better than his music career at the moment, like his ex-songwriting partner Paul McCartney, 1972, was not a good year for John Lennon musically. His newest record, a strictly political affair, entitled, Some Time in New York City, with the aforementioned Luck of the Irish, the rally and cry for John Sinclair, entitled John Sinclair,

and a string of other protest knockoffs, was savaged by critics. Rolling Stone called the album, quote, Incipient Artistic Suicide and went on to further denounce it by saying, quote, the songs are awful, shallow, and derivative, sloppy nursery rhymes that patronizing issues in individuals they seek to exalt.

Only a monomaniacal smugness could allow the Lennon's to think that this witless doggerol wouldn't insult the intelligence and feelings of any audience, unquote. Calling John Lennon Wittless was like calling Richard Nixon a liberal, Them's fighting words. Except John knew it. Who is he kidding?

He could knock off a good protest song with the best of them, but an album full of them? This wasn't 1963, and he wasn't Bob Dylan. He was John Lennon. And what he did best was interpret this fucked-up world through his own experiences, with visceral, subjective, simplicity, and soul. Cold turkey, how do you sleep, jealous guy, instant karma.

Those were the types of solo efforts from John Lennon that nobody could touch. Not his ex-Beedled bandmates, not Bob Dylan, not anybody. John commenting on the world from within it as opposed to taking a folkie's objective journalistic approach was the side of the street he was meant to work. Sure, the occasional swipe at angry folk music like Give Me Some Truth worked out, but that was because it was entirely subjective. And John could be grand too to great effect. His song, Imagine, proved that.

And the rest of the songs on the same album, along with the album that preceded it, John Lennon, Plastic Ono Band, proved that John Lennon, as a songwriter, despite as many flaws and contradictions, was at the top of his game upon exiting the Beatles, which was more than the critics could say for Paul McCartney, whose solo records to that point had all critically flopped. But Paul would be back. John knew it, just as he knew he would be too. If he were only allowed to stay in the U.S., he couldn't bear going back to England.

It would be seen as a defeat, a humiliation, a rejection, the same rejection he'd known his whole life. First, his dad didn't want him, then his mom. It singed him as a boy, and the pain never left. It drove him, freeing himself from this pain, the pain of being John or worse, Beetle John. All those expectations, no amount of drugs or pussy or politics, would loosen him from its grip. And now this case, this fucking case, was throwing it all back into his face. And there was no running from himself in England.

At least in the States, in New York City, he could hide. He could blend in in New York. New Yorkers largely left him alone, and that was something. akin to letting him be himself, and that was freedom. He'd felt that freedom nowhere else in the world, not since he was a star anyway, maybe in the early days, back in Hamburg or Liverpool, but not in a long, long time.

Losing that feeling was horrifying, and thus losing the case was horrifying. But not as horrifying as what was about to happen next. The doorbell to John Lennon's Bank Street apartment rang. John, no doubt, stoned, and used to a revolving door of revolutionaries by now, opened the door without checking first to see who was there. Two men burst in, and they were clearly wasted.

They were there as they mumbled, to collect. Collect what, John asked. Your debt, came in response. John took from the tone in their voices that they meant to make him pay for being rich, for not truly being down with the cause, and the revolution was eating its own. The two stone roughnecks set about tossing John's apartment looking for cash. John begged them to stop.

They took what they found, which wasn't much. An annoyed, they positioned themselves around John's color television. The one thing the Langerist Lennon could not do without. He loved that fucking television. It was all he did most of the day. Sit and beg, get stone, watch TV, try to fuck Yoko. Sex was an on starter lately, so the TV was all he had. He begged the two men, please.

They could care less. Out went to television. They stole the Salvador Dali lithograph on the wall on their way out too for good measure. Fuck! John Lennon was pissed. This. This is what he got for his contribution to the cause. All the money, the dope, everything he'd shared. His name is fucking reputation and this is how he's repaid. With a goddamn home invasion, a robbery, his television, his fucking television stolen right out from under him

and there was nothing he could do about it. Everyone knew where he was, where he lived, literally. If he wasn't safe in his home, where then? Was he safe? Beetlemania was bad, but this was now somehow worse. There was one big prison all over again, his own Attica. He was helpless, scared, angry, and about to make some changes. The letter set off a chain of events, later revealed in court upon discovery.

South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, that old Dixie Bull. Thurman was born into white supremacy. Rabble-rousing illegal immigrant pop singers didn't play. Before setting his sights on John Lennon, Senator Thurman took aim at the civil rights movement, blocking bills that would have granted equal rights to blacks, voting against Hawaii's statehood because the islands weren't white enough, and of course famously switching parties, from Democrat to Republican and leading Southern whites

who shared his attitudes towards race with him. By the time the early 70s rolled around, Thurman's racist attitude had started to thaw. Maybe it had something to do with the secret he harbored, that back in the 1920s, he'd fathered an illegitimate child with a black lover. By 1970, Senator Thurmond had voted in favor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday becoming a national holiday, and had hired numerous black men and women to his staff.

Such was his turnaround on race that when he died six months after giving up his Senate seat, in 2003 at the age of 100, fellow senator at the time, Democrat Joe Biden, spoke at his memorial service, but I digress. Nonetheless, in 1972, Republican Strom Thurmond was still seen as a patriot, above all else. So when certain actions came to light involving John Lennon's role and freeing John Sinclair from prison, Senator Thurman sat down to write a letter to his boss, Richard M. Nixon. In the letter, Thurman claims that Lenin's involvement with and support of radicals will, quote, pour tremendous amounts of money into the coffers of the new left, it can only inevitably lead to a clash

between a controlled mob organized by this group and law enforcement officials. The letter had the desired effect, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI launched a surveillance and harassment campaign against the Lenin's throughout the 1972 election season. Years later, it was this very harassment campaign that would form the backbone of Lenin's defense and sink the government's case to have him deported. In true Nixon era irony, of course. A series of status reports from Hoover to Nixon's right-hand man, H.R. Haldeman, was a smoking gun that, once discovered, proved the immigration case against John Lennon was nothing more than an illegitimate political hit, John. But on election night, November 7, 1972,

John Lennon did not yet know what good fortune was coming his way, that he would be spared deportation. No, instead, he was faced with the gloom of four more years of Richard Milhouse Nixon in office, an outcome of which he was certain spelled instant doom for him, for it would seal his deportation. On that night, he was in the control room at the record plan, listening to Yoko trying to screech her way through something barely passing as a melody. The news of the returns favoring Nixon only made him to test Yoko's performance more.

He sucked on a bottle of tequila and grew angrier by the second, making disparaging remarks about Yoko's lack of talent to the studio's engineer behind his wife's back. Yoko, if she was aware, to her credit, soldiered on in the vocal booth, which was more than could be said of her husband, who was wearing his defeatism on his double wide lapel like a hungover sailor, proudly sporting a fresh herpes outbreak. Mercifully, the session wrapped around 4 a.m. and Mr. and Mrs. John Lennon headed downtown to Jerry Rubin's apartment

to take in the rest of the election night returns and commiserate with their fellow revolutionaries. Rubin nearly shot himself when he heard the screaming outside his door. It was John. Pissed. Pissed drunk and pissed off and reverting back to his primal scream therapy. He barged into the relatively calm apartment gathering like an inmate freshly escaped from the sanitarium. Zelda Fitzgerald had nothing on him.

He grabbed the first woman he saw with two hands on her cheeks, pulled her face into his and smacked a big wet one on her. Yoko brought up the rear nonplussed. This wasn't her first rodeo. John went at Rubin. Revolution? Revolution? How the fuck are you going to have a fucking revolution when you can't even get McGovern elected?

Jerry Rubin was crestfallen. John wasn't wrong. Yoko sat down calmly between a woman. couple on the couch, pulled out a small bag of cocaine, and dutifully began cutting it up into lines. John left Reuben to his guest and turned his wild eyes to the door. An exit was needed. Fast. Fuck these people. Charlatans, ineffective, middle-class bourgeois roots. What could they actually do? Nothing. If you want to accomplish anything, leave it to the working man. That's who he was. Something to be. Free.

Fuck all of you, he yelled, swiping a bottle of vodka off the table. as he made his way to the door. He pulled from the bottle of vodka and screamed to no one and everyone at the same time. I'm going to join the weatherman. I'm going to shoot a policeman. And with that, John Lennon's revolution was lost. Years later, after splitting from Yoko, after heading to Los Angeles to drink away his pain

to fuck his way to freedom to run from his own abandonment issues and from the guilt of abandoning his first wife Cynthia and his son, Julian. After white knuckling it through Hollywood self-destruction with a gun-toating Phil Spector and a double milkshake swigging Harry Nilsson. After finding his way back to New York, back to Yoko, remarkably in one piece, after finding out she was pregnant and that at last there would be no miscarriage, after giving birth to their beautiful boy, Sean, after freeing himself from whatever the next big thing was,

from LSD, from the Maharishi, from primal scream therapy, from politics, after doubling down on the fantasy of Yoko and Sean on family. After all that, in 1980, John Lennon described his years as a radical by saying, quote, I dabbled in so-called politics in the late 60s and 70s, more out of guilt than anything else. Guilt for being rich and guilt for thinking peace and love isn't enough, and you have to go out and get shot or get punched in the face to prove I'm one of the people.

I was doing it against my instincts. The irony, of course, was that when John Lennon finally did let go of politics and let go of wanting to be, as he said, shot. He found himself outside his luxury Dakota apartment staring down a gunman. And then, I'm shot. And it was right. He was shot, hit four times, and it was bad.

The police were on the scene quickly. John was carried into the back of a patrol car by two cops to take him with the quickness to Roosevelt Hospital. The dying man in the back seat with his head in the cop's lap, gurgling blood. The cop looked at. into the dying man's eyes, couldn't believe what he was seeing. Buck, and the cop looked down at the man and asked,

Do you know who you are? John Lennon looked up at the officer, gave him some truth, whispering. Yeah. And then he died. On December 8, 1980, he was free. Finally, free from the trap of being John Lennon, Sir Winston O'Bugie, Harry Nilsons, hustle, Phil Spector's hostage, Jerry Rubin's Schick,

Paul McCartney's partner, George and Rennon, Ringo's leader, the world's Beatles, Cynthia's ex, Julian's absent father, Mimi's embarrassment, his mom's anxiety, his dad's abandonment. He was just John, Yoko's husband, Sean's father, free but gone. Just when he'd found himself a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. All right, thanks for checking out this episode of Disgraceland on John Lennon's early solo days. The question of the week is, and this is one of my favorite questions,

which Beatle had the better solo career and why? Was it John, Paul, George, Ringo? Ringo's making a country album right now. Let me know and let me know your favorite solo Beatles albums as well. 617-906663-8. Leave me a voicemail, send me a text. Let me know. You can also reach me at this Graceland Pod as well as on Instagram, X, and Facebook.

Leave a review for the show on Apple Podcast or Spotify and win some free merch. All right. Here comes some credit. It's. 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 disgracelampod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it.

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