Yoko By LESLEY ANN JONES FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY This is an excerpt of an interview that appeared on the Dailymail few monts ago of which few people are aware. To read the full article click here
Andy Peebles interview Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1980. Two days later, Lennon was killed. Speaking for the first time, he recalls his misgivings about her conduct after Lennon's death - including how she acted with her new boyfriend.
It was the rock ’n’ roll coup of the decade, the one that every broadcaster was desperate to secure: the first interview for ten years with John Lennon.
• Why did Yoko seem much happier after John’s death?
• Why did she parade her new lover Sam Havadtoy around New York, dressed in John’s old clothes?
• And why did she appear to exploit John’s memory and legacy for personal fame?
• Terrified to travel home for fear that U.S. immigration authorities would prevent him returning to the States, John had stayed put and parked his musical career.
• Now he was back on the music scene, promoting the album Double Fantasy, And they wanted to talk to the BBC, the broadcaster that John held most dear.
Their apartment was palatial, gorgeous. We were shown in to Yoko’s enormous office. She was seated behind an antique Egyptian desk. We were asked to remove our shoes.
‘I remember thinking, thank God I’d put on clean socks. I sat cross- legged on a sofa, and barely said a word. Yoko was opinionated and emphatic.
She told us she’d had better offers than the BBC’s. She was being deliberately provocative. She wanted us to beg for it.’ She said, “Right, if we are going to do this, I need to make very clear to you that this interview will be 50 per cent about John, and 50 per cent about me.”
I felt like saying, “Who on earth are you? You’re the woman who has done the Beatles mess.
Peebles and his team spent the next day Christmas shopping, and boarded their return Pan Am flight on the evening of December 8 Only when the plane landed was Peebles given the devastating news.
But soon after the historic interview was finally broadcast in January 1981, he began receiving calls from New York. Each time a Lennon anniversary approached, it was to Peebles that Yoko turned, insisting that only he was allowed to interview her.
‘I was embarrassed and ashamed at some of the decisions she made.
‘She used John’s death to hype her own new record, for example, and rushed to record a sentimental B-side compilation of bits of John talking as a souvenir.
She compared John’s killing to the assassination of John F Kennedy, and herself to Jackie Onassis, insisting that their influence was greater than that of the Kennedys.
She cried, and said how much she missed John, and how stunned she still was by what had happened. But I found it hard to take her tears seriously. I knew she was in a new relationship with Sam Havadtoy, a sculptor and antiques expert 20 years her junior, and a former Lennon aide.
It was quite scandalous.’On the same night as John’s murder, it is said, Havadtoy moved into the Dakota. He barely left Yoko’s side for months.
But suddenly, Sam took on a new image. Yoko had her young companion dress up in John’s old clothes, and wear his hair long, just like John’s. It was an impersonation that shocked and embarrassed their neighbours, including ballet star Rudolph Nureyev, who commented on it.
Havadtoy and Yoko wound up spending 20 years together – far longer than her marriage to John – and separated in 2000.The minute she heard that I’d left the BBC to go elsewhere, I never heard from her again.’
