The new documentary “One to One: John & Yoko” explores the late Beatle’s Free the People Tour, which he was planning with activist Jerry Rubin aimed at raising bail money for prisoners who can’t afford it.
In one scene, Lennon talks on the phone with drummer Jim Keltner about the risk of getting political on the tour, which was set to conclude at the Republican Convention in August 1972.
Lennon is asked by Keltner, now 82, if he has “any paranoia” about people before the tour. (NYP)
“What people?.. You mean people trying to kill us or something like that? I’m not about to get myself shot,” Lennon said on the phone, per PEOPLE.
“It’ll cause excitement in its own way. But, er, you know, I’m still an artist, but a revolutionary artist, right?” the “Imagine” singer added.
In a later scene, Lennon told a journalist he started taping his own phone calls out of fear for his life.
“We started noticing people hanging outside the apartment. And I have a driver, he’s an ex-cop. But we’re getting followed by this car, all the time,” he said. “So we’re all very nervous.”
Eight years after the phone call with Keltner, Lennon was shot and killed outside his apartment in New York City on December 8, 1980. He was 40 years old.
“One to One: John & Yoko” premiered at the Venice Film Festival Friday and also played at the Telluride Film Festival this weekend.
John Lennon Producer Jack Douglas, Recalls John's last night alive.
8th december, in the room, John sang live on all of them. All those were keepers. When I did the stripped down version a couple years ago, it was the basic track and almost all just live vocals. So you could hear him talk to the band, talk to me. It’s very personal, there are no effects on it, it’s very dry.
Directed by Kevin Macdonald, the project follows Lennon and Ono’s move from London to New York City nine years before his death. It features archival footage of interviews and phone calls combined with concert footage and historical videos.
In an interview with Deadline, Macdonald said he was approached about making the documentary by a producer at Mercury Studios.
After John left the UK for good on August 1971, he never returned to the UK again. The main reason he didn’t come back was due to green card problems (the American permit which allows a foreign national to live and work permanently in the US). John struggled to obtain a green card and while that was on-going, if he was to leave the US he would have risked being refused reentry when he came back, so for several years John couldn’t leave for that reason.
John and Yoko left the UK to live in New York mainly because of the fact a lot of people blamed Yoko for the break up of the Beatles and we’re not very nice to her (shall we say).
John obtained a Green Card on 27th July 1976. By this point John was settled in New York and his son, Sean had been born. With the Green Card he was free to leave American and would be allowed to return. He still didn’t visit the UK, which was probably more to do with he was busy with other things, most prominently raising Sean as John took an extended break from his music career to do that. John would have been able to apply for full American citizenship in 1981.
He did take holidays to other places like Japan and Bermuda and was planning a visit to the UK when he was killed in 1980. John was raised by his Aunt Mimi and he’d telephoned her only a few days (or hours, depending on which source you believe) to say he was home sick and was planning a visit soon. There was also some Beatles business which had been pencilled in for 1981, which John might have returned to the UK for.
