Robert Rosen

 

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

As Robert Rosen's wife, I've sometimes felt as if I were also living with the spirit of John Lennon. This has been mostly good, but I once told a journalist in Mexico City that there had been times when I never wanted to hear the words "John Lennon" again. (I imagine anyone who's lived with a biographer can relate.) That was long ago, and since then Bob's connection with Lennon has become a beautiful, if intricate, part of the fabric of our life together. Last January we both took part in an event in Seville centered on Bob's book Nowhere Man. I'm a singer-songwriter and aside from doing a few original songs, I performed "I'm Losing You," "You Can't Do That," and "Now and Then," which had just come out a couple of months before.

The phrase "now and then" also figures into a song I wrote and recently released as a digital single. "Mild December" was partly inspired by last Christmas evening, which Bob and I spent with our friend Michael Medeiros, aka "Mike Tree," as Lennon called him when he was John's gardener. After dinner, we settled into Michael's cozy living room to listen to music and talk. Lennon seemed to hover over us that night, and when I looked up the weather for December 1980, I saw that it was mild then too.

 

The recording was produced by Adam Tilzer, with Danny Bradley on drums, and mastered by Nick Miller. You can read the lyrics below:

 

Mild December

 

It was a mild December

When we had our Christmas meal 

Spicy puttanesca

Red wine for the reveal

 

You played a tape just for me 

I heard the stops and starts

Then we went out on the fire escape

Those geraniums had heart

 

And you said you were unwanted

But you screamed that all away

Then you strutted with a puffed-up chest

To a Central Park West subway

 

And now you've got an aerie

A nest that's rent controlled

I walked up all those steps for you

Just wishing for some snow

 

And I played a mix of my new song

You said I got it kinda wrong

But I won't go that low for you, my friend 

I read the writing on your wall

But honey I can take a fall

Progress not perfection I agree

 

And then you bit into a gummy

Said you just had one a day

But you would eat that whole damn bag

Just to make those memories fade

 

'Cause that girl was gonna kill you

You found her gun and split in two

One part floated near her bed

She'd used her best voodoo

 

And you said you liked Folk City

When you were oh so young

You drank a lot in Gerdes' place

Now it's got you on the run

 

Well, you are such a gentle man

But the whiskey made you mean

Lashing out at those you love

Yeah, I've heard about that scene

 

And I played a mix of my new song

You said I got it kinda wrong

But I won't go that low for you, my friend 

I read the writing on your wall

But honey you can take a fall

You didn't need that four bucks anyway

 

You got snakebit in the desert

You hear the rattle in your ear

You think my song is fiction 

We can go with that, my dear

 

Still you took care of her jade tree

Its leaves like blades could cut 

But money showered in its wake

Or that's the scuttlebutt

 

I played CBGB's

When I was oh so young

I wanted more from Hilly's place

But still I had my fun

 

And it was a mild December

When he stepped from his car 

I lose you now and then, it seems

But you never go too far

 

Can we ever really change

So many cells to rearrange

I walked up those steep steps for you

Just the way he did before everything blew

 

It was a mild December

It was a mild December

It was a mild December

It was a mild December

It was a mild December

It was a mild December

We All Shine On: John, Yoko, & Me

By Elliot Mintz

Dutton

293 pages

$32

 

If you were to pull all the sycophantic lines out of We All Shine On, Elliot Mintz's memoir about his relationship with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, you'd have enough material to fill a small, stand-alone volume. The full effect of his obsequiousness doesn't hit you until you're well into the book. For me it reached a breaking point on page 262, when Lennon asks Mintz if there's anything he doesn't like about Double Fantasy, Lennon's final album, a collaboration with Ono. "I can't think of anything I don't love about it," Mintz says, not daring to utter a single word that might convey the slightest hint of negativity about Ono's questionable contributions, which make up half an LP that Lennon, in his own journals, called "mediocre." 

The harshest thing Mintz can bring himself to say about Ono is that it seemed risky "that she put so much faith in the occult." But he also notes that when he was working as a radio journalist she ruined his interview with Baba Ram Das, the psychologist, when she insulted him, saying that he sounded "a little phony," and she (and Lennon) constantly interrupted his interview with Salvador Dalí. (He took Lennon and Ono to the interviews because, he says, they wanted to go and "there was no way I could say no.") Otherwise he showers Ono with praise, saying that she is "a complicated woman, gaming out her future like a chess master thinking five moves ahead"; writes music that's "inspiring," "sweet," "poetic," and "comforting"; and manipulates John "with the cool precision of a doctor preparing for an amputation." Mintz also seems to agree with Lennon's assessment of Ono that she's "always right." 

Mintz does not treat Lennon with the same unflagging respect. Though he never criticized John to his face, the ex-Beatle's repeated verbal abuse seems to have left Mintz with a certain amount of resentment. And it comes across in his descriptions of Lennon's egregious and well-documented character flaws. But if he'd ignored them, the book's lack of credibility would be even more obvious. 

Lennon's alcohol-fueled ugliness casts a shadow over We All Shine On. Mintz is often "all but carrying" a drunken Lennon somewhere. A typical incident takes place in Tokyo in 1977. Mintz and Lennon are drinking in a sake bar. The crowd recognizes John and goes nuts. Mintz and Lennon flee into the street, but Lennon wants to drink more. Mintz insists they return to the hotel. Lennon grabs him by the lapels, slams him against a wall, and says, "If I want to have a fucking drink, you're not standing in my way." (On another occasion, a completely sober Lennon says to Mintz, "I'm gonna ask you to do anything I fucking feel like asking you. Don't ever tell me what I can or can't say to you.")

The worst episode occurs in 1973 after Lennon and Ono separate and he moves to LA with May Pang, his assistant who became his lover. Ono has instructed Mintz, based in LA, to look after John because, he says, he was "functionally a child when it came to taking care of himself." One night, while living at record producer Lou Adler's house, Lennon, in a drunken rage after a difficult recording session with Phil Spector, smashes Adler's gold records with a walking stick until security guards subdue him and tie him to a chair. Mintz arrives to find Lennon still raging and demanding to be untied. "Then," he writes, "John spat out an epithet so hurtful and offensive… I can't bring myself to repeat it." (Lennon, I'd imagine, used a more vicious variation of the "queer Jew" remark he said to Brian Epstein when Epstein asked him to suggest a title for his memoir—he called it A Cellar Full of Noise.)

Mintz's treatment of May Pang underscores the book's lack of credibility.

Where Pang was during this incident is unclear, and it's Mintz's treatment of her that underscores the book's lack of credibility. After he picked up John and May at the airport, he says, he seldom saw her again in LA and can't recall a single conversation, in LA or New York, in which John mentioned her name. He writes her out of the story, challenging Pang's perceptions of her relationship with Lennon and implying that she's delusional if she thinks Lennon had deep feelings for her. He says that her account of what happened in LA gives you the impression that "she was the red hot center of John's universe" when, in fact, her only job "was to make sure John was properly fed and cared for." The furthest Mintz goes is to admit that John had some "genuine affection for her." May, according to Mintz, was nothing, and Yoko was his only true love. 

If it's true that Mintz rarely saw John and May together in LA, it's because Lennon didn't want him to see them together and have Mintz report back to Yoko. And if John never spoke to Mintz about May, it's because John continued seeing her after he returned to Yoko. According to Lennon's own journals, he saw May anytime he could get away from Yoko and carried a flame for her until the end. John wanted them both but Yoko wouldn't allow it.

Yet We All Shine On, despite its credibility issues, is an entertaining book, and Mintz, who doesn't credit a ghostwriter, shows flashes of writing talent. Though there's the occasional cliché ("after what felt like an eternity"); the intermittent slip into PR-speak ("No one can capture the way Lennon talks in writing"); and a handful of overdone similes (in the same paragraph Mintz is "like a tragic character in an Edgar Allan Poe story" and a moment in the Dakota is "like a scene from a classic film noir thriller"), he knows how to tell a story. And there are a few stories that even the most avid Lennon fanatics probably haven't heard. For example, Lennon and Mintz, on their way to the airport in LA, stop, on John's command, at a seedy strip club, the Losers, and even as the dancers gyrate inches from Lennon's face, they don't recognize him—he's too out of context. And Mintz's melancholy recollection of Lennon and Paul McCartney's awkward Christmas reunion at the Dakota nicely illustrates how the ex-Beatles had grown apart and had little to talk about.

There are also some charming descriptions of Laurel Canyon in the early 1970s, when Mintz lived there, and of Karuizawa, Japan, in 1977, where he spent time with Lennon and Ono. 

Mintz does manage to make himself seem sympathetic with a relatable backstory. He grew up in Washington Heights, in upper Manhattan, at the time a working-class Jewish neighborhood. His father, a Polish immigrant, worked in the garment business. Mintz was shy, awkward, and smaller than his classmates. He also stuttered, which led to his being bullied. Wanting to work in radio, he studied broadcasting at Los Angeles City College and overcame his stutter. His big break came while still in college, in 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. One of his classmates was in the marines with JFK's killer, Lee Harvey Oswald. Mintz interviewed him, and by the end of the day the interview had been broadcast all over the city. Soon he had a job interviewing rock stars and beat poets on late-night radio. Impressed by Ono's experimental LP Fly, he interviewed her, it went well, and she started calling him all the time. Sometimes they talked for as long as seven hours. Then he interviewed Lennon and soon had a hotline installed in his house exclusively for Lennon and Ono, as well as a red light over his bed that flashed when they called in the middle of the night. (Mintz claims he has a photographic memory and can "reconstruct complete conversations" he had with Lennon and Ono a half-century ago. He most likely recorded them, a common practice among the Lenono company employees.) "I had come to accept that being at John and Yoko's beck and call was becoming my mission in life," he writes. "Why I accepted that mission, I couldn't tell you. I just did." 

Maybe Mintz's personal life was empty and the Lenono connection filled him with the identity he craved.

To venture a guess: Maybe his personal life was empty and the Lenono connection filled him with the identity he craved.

One of the book's oddities is Mintz's irrelevant and distracting emphasis on his girlfriends, which, to venture another guess, nobody really cares about. But he wants you to know that he did, indeed, have girlfriends. He refers a number of times to his impossibly demanding relationship with John and Yoko and their endless phone calls as the reason he never married and had children. "If only I'd had the strength to resist the undefinable magnetic pull [of John and Yoko], I might have ended up having a more balanced, traditional existence," he writes. Instead, he says, he was married to John and Yoko.

The girlfriend dynamic plays out in a story he tells about a "stunningly beautiful" woman he met at the Troubadour club, in LA, in 1971. He of the photographic memory can't remember her name but says she might have been his "soulmate." He's in bed with her when Ono calls at four a.m. Maybe, he thinks, he shouldn't take the call. But he takes it, and he's on the phone for more than an hour talking with her about losing weight. His girlfriend wakes up and wants to know what's going on. He can't tell her. John and Yoko are a secret, and divulging the friendship would be breaking their "unspoken code of trust" (which becomes spoken when Ono orders him, "Just keep us your secret"). Mintz's potential soulmate leaves and he never sees her again.

Another peculiarity is Mintz's take on his multitude of celebrity friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. The name-dropping is intense: Sal Mineo, Mickey Dolenz, David Cassidy, Donovan, Brian Wilson, Beau and Jeff Bridges, Alice Cooper, Paris Hilton, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Carole King, David Crosby, Stephen Stills. He says he doesn't know exactly why celebrities are attracted to him. "I never sought out relationships with famous people; they just somehow gravitated towards me…. It's the story of my life, being befriended by the fabled and adored." His best guess is that he's done so many celebrity interviews, he's not starstruck, and I'm sure that's part of it. But Mintz is also small (Ono size), unthreatening, discreet, takes abuse well, and follows orders. Most importantly, he had popular radio and TV shows that provided a safe space, devoid of uncomfortable questions, where celebrities could promote their work.

Mintz obliterates his last shreds of credibility when he tells the story of Fred Seaman, John and Yoko's personal assistant.

In the final part of the book, which covers the aftermath of Lennon's murder, Mintz obliterates his last shreds of credibility when he tells the story of Fred Seaman, John and Yoko's personal assistant and Lennon's paid companion—essentially one of Mintz's New York counterparts. I'm intimately familiar with this particular lie because it involves me. For a detailed account of what happened, I'd direct you to my own book Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, especially a chapter titled "An Open Letter to G. Barry Golson." Golson was the Playboy magazine editor who, in 1984, shepherded into print a more elaborate version of the tale that Mintz has been peddling for more than 40 years and that he dictated to David and Victoria Sheff who are credited with writing the story. 

In We All Shine On, Mintz says that after Lennon's murder Seaman, portraying himself as "Lennon's true disciple," smuggled out of the Dakota five of John's personal journals, gave them to me, and instructed me to write a "tell-all book." 

One part of this is true: Seaman did give me Lennon's journals. As I describe in Nowhere Man, he told me that in the summer of 1980, when Lennon was in Bermuda working on Double Fantasy, he had a premonition of his death—listen to "Borrowed Time," recorded in Bermuda—and if anything should happen to him, it was Seaman's job to tell the true story of his life and use any research material he needed.

As I later testified under oath, at Seaman's 2002 copyright infringement trial: Yes, I believed him. I had no reason not to. Seaman, a close and trusted friend, had always been supportive of my writing career and wanted me to help him write John's biography. The journals alone were proof enough that he was telling the truth. It didn't seem possible that he could just walk out of the Dakota with John's diaries unless he'd been authorized to do so.

The project blew up in my face in 1983 when Seaman ransacked my apartment while I was out of town, taking everything I'd been working on. I then came forward and told Ono what happened. She asked to see my diaries beginning from the day she hired Seaman. Mintz was one of the people she gave them to: 500,000 words, written in the heat of the moment, most of them on teletype paper run through an IBM Selectric typewriter—a Kerouac-inspired literary experiment. Mintz and the Playboy team combed through those pages searching for anything they could use in their article that would damage me and Seaman. From those half-million words they cherry-picked about 200, and distorted them with their own commentary.

One sentence pilfered from my diary originally described Ono's unparalleled ability to exploit the Lennon name only months after his death: "Dead Lennons equal big $" (as Mintz slightly misquotes it). Forty years ago in Playboy and now in his book, Mintz turns the line around to say it's a description of my own and Seaman's attitude toward Lennon's murder. Except Mintz now says that Seaman "scrawled" the line in his own diaries. Why he attributes it to Seaman and says it was scrawled rather than typewritten appears to be a gratuitous lie intended to do nothing more than further damage Seaman. 

Another probable (though harmless) lie is Mintz's account of how he found out Lennon had been murdered. He says his mother called him because she heard on the radio somebody had been shot "at that building on Seventy-Second Street you're always visiting." He tries calling the Dakota but can't get anyone on the phone. He turns on the TV. Nothing. (It doesn't occur to him to turn on KNX, LA's all-news radio station.) In a panic he decides to fly to New York and drives to the airport, but the radio in his Jaguar isn't working. Walking through the airport, he sees nothing, hears nothing. On the plane, a crying flight attendant emerges from the cockpit. He asks her what's wrong and she tells him John Lennon is dead. The story simply does not have the ring of truth, and it's a reminder that little in this book can be taken at face value and every word, especially about Lennon and Ono, should be regarded with extreme skepticism. 

More lies: When Albert Goldman's 1988 biography, The Lives of John Lennon, is published, Mintz asks Ono to do a radio interview to dispel "rumors" that "John's 'househusband' image was a public relations fraud" and that he was a devotee of prostitutes. It's more or less true that Lennon was kind of a quasi-househusband at times, but he did have a masseuse regularly come to the Dakota to manually pleasure him (Ringo walked in one such session) and he did visit prostitutes in South Africa when he went there in April 1980. He wrote about it in his journals.

Another one of Mintz's New York counterparts, Michael "Mike Tree" Medeiros, Lennon's gardner, personal assistant, and friend (Ono's attorneys have blocked the publication of his memoir), disputes a number of Mintz's claims about what happened when he arrived at the Dakota after John's murder. Mintz says he saw Lennon's blood on the pavement as he entered the building. Medeiros says the blood was cleaned up long before Mintz arrived. Mintz says he spent a lot of time with Ono's employees "fielding a never-ending barrage of phone calls." According to Medeiros, one of the people fielding those calls, Mintz never fielded any phone calls.

Yes, these are minor threads in a tapestry of lies, and to point out more would be redundant. But they do show that the essential problem with the book is how to discern truth from Mintz's skillfully spun PR fantasies. Perhaps it's best to keep in mind that the author of We All Shine On gave up a journalism career to lie on command for Lennon and Ono, to be their G. Gordon Liddy—a man who would walk over his own grandmother for John and Yoko (as Liddy said he'd do for Richard Nixon).

We All Shine On is both a fairy tale and a masterpiece of propaganda. It's the flip side of Seaman's book, The Last Days of John Lennon, also a well-crafted, entertaining read with serious credibility issues but that has nothing good to say about Ono (and that Ono's attorneys were able to force out of print). 

In the case of both books, truth seekers would be well advised to look elsewhere.

 

Disponible en español

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In celebration of the upcoming Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, 5785, on October 2, I present John Lennon singing "Hava Nagila" at the Amsterdam Hilton. This took place March 1969 during John and Yoko Ono's Bed-In for peace while they were being interviewed by Israeli journalist Akiva Nof, a correspondent for the Voice Of Israel.

 

Nof had written a Hebrew song about Jerusalem and persuaded John to sing that, too. You can also hear John playing "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," which he says is "from the new Beatles album that was not released yet," meaning Abbey Road.

 

Muchas gracias to Mexican journalist Esteban Cisneros for bringing this video to my attention. And happy new year to one and all!

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on X or my eternally embryonic Instagram or my recently launched Threads.

In December 2021, I wrote an article for The Village Voice about Michael Barbosa Medeiros, John Lennon's gardener, personal assistant, archivist, and friend. John couldn't remember Michael's last name and called him "Mike Tree."

 

The Voice article, "Mike Tree in John Lennon's Nutopia," was in part about a memoir Michael had written about working with John and Yoko Ono beginning in 1977 and continuing until 1982, 18 months after John was murdered.

 

Michael sold John Lennon: Barefoot in Nutopia to Diversion Books. They changed the title to In Lennon's Garden and were supposed to publish it in 2020. But Ono's attorneys threatened legal action and now, four years later, Diversion has still not published the book and they refuse to return the rights. The book remains in Limbono.

 

Michael wanted to wait until Barefoot in Nutopia was available before he spoke publicly about his relationship with John and Yoko.

 

In 2022, I went on Robert Rodriguez's podcast, Something About the Beatles, to discuss Michael and how Yoko is able to suppress books that refute her narrative of John as the happy househusband. The episode is called "Catch and Kill."

 

This month Michael, now 84, agreed to talk with Robert about the book and life with John and Yoko. It's an amazing episode of Something About the Beatles: intimate, detailed, surprising, and honest. Among Michael's many revelations is that John wanted him to become romantically involved with Yoko.

 

Please do give it a listen.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on X or my eternally embryonic Instagram or my recently launched Threads.

 

This is the final installment of a transcript, edited for clarity, of the questions asked at my Nowhere Man event at Subterranean Books in St. Louis. Transcription courtesy of Laurel Zito.

 

What did John write in his diary that was most revealing about his relationship with Paul McCartney that was not publicly known?

 

One of the main parts of Nowhere Man is my description of John Lennon's relationship with Paul McCartney based on my memory of his journals. John didn't see much of Paul, but he thought about him virtually every day. He was angry at Paul because Paul wanted a Beatles reunion and John wanted no part of that. He felt that reuniting the Beatles was going backward, and he wanted to move forward. The Beatles were his childhood, his adolescence, his 20s. He was a 40-year-old man with a family. He wanted to leave the past behind. And Paul was just a constant reminder of that past: "Let's reunite the Beatles! Let's reunite the Beatles!" John made it absolutely clear that he didn't want to do that. He said he loved Paul like a brother but he couldn't stand being around him.

 

While John was in seclusion, doing nothing, not recording music, not writing music, Paul was out there recording song after song, hit after hit, and John was extremely jealous. He felt that the only way he could get Paul's attention was if Yoko did something like sell a cow for a quarter-million dollars, and that would make the papers. And Yoko sold a cow for a quarter-million dollars, which at the time was a record-setting price for a cow. There was a big story about it in the papers, and John wrote in his journal that it was a great victory over the McCartneys.

 

In early 1980, Paul was getting ready to go on tour with Wings. He stopped by New York on his way to Japan and called John at the Dakota. He said he had some good weed and, you know, would you like me to come by and we'll smoke some weed together. And John said no. Then he found out that in Japan Paul was planning to stay in the Presidential Suite at the Okura Hotel, in Tokyo. John and Yoko considered that their private suite and he was outraged and repulsed that Paul and his wife, Linda, would be staying there. He told Yoko that we can't let this happen, that she's got to stop McCartney from going on tour and staying in our suite and "ruining our hotel karma."

 

"Yoko did it!!! Paul busted in Japan!!!"

 

He wrote in his journals about how Yoko practices magic. They both were into all this occult stuff: magic, tarot, numerology, you name it. They had a full-time tarot-card reader, Charlie Swan—his real name was John Green. Yoko and Swan went to Colombia, in South America, where Swan hooked her up with a powerful bruja, a witch. And she paid the witch $60,000 to teach her how to cast magic spells. And Yoko told John that she was going to use her magic to stop McCartney from staying in their hotel suite. And what happened was—you might remember this—in 1980, when Paul arrived in Japan, he was stopped at customs smuggling marijuana. He was arrested; he spent 10 days in jail; and the tour was ruined. And when John found out about this, it was the happiest moment of 1980 for him up to that point. Because his life was just kind of adrift, and he was doing nothing. Even his journals were really fragmented. He just wasn't writing coherently. But when Paul was busted he wrote, "Yoko did it!!! Paul busted in Japan!!!" And then he quotes the thing from Monopoly: "Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200." He was thrilled.

 

John also thought he had a psychic connection with Paul. Anytime Paul was in town he said he heard McCartney's music in his head. And then finally, in Bermuda, in the summer of 1980, John started writing music again, serious music, for the first time in five years. And, yeah, he was really struggling to get back in gear and to connect with his muse and write something inspired. What really got John going was that McCartney had just released an album called McCartney II. And one of the songs on there is "Coming Up." The whole song is addressed directly to John, and McCartney's calling for a Beatles reunion. One of the lyrics in "Coming Up" is "I know that we can get together/Stick around and see." John would play "Coming Up" over and over again. It inspired him and he started writing a song that was really a response to "Coming Up." That song was "I Don't Wanna Face It." It has autobiographical lyrics like "You want to save humanity/But it's people that you just can't stand" and "You're looking for oblivion/With one eye on the Hall of Fame." Even though Paul wasn't there, John was collaborating with him by listening to "Coming Up" and responding to it. Some of John's best writing was when he was collaborating with Paul. Which is not to say his solo songs were bad, but his best work was with the Beatles.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on X (the site formerly known as Twitter) or my eternally embryonic Instagram or my just-launched Threads.

One thing I'm celebrating this holiday season is the impending re-release, on July 7, 2022, of my latest book, now titled A Brooklyn Memoir. Originally called Bobby in Naziland, it was first published in the "before times," in late 2019. Sales were brisk, reviews appreciative—"[Rosen] reminded me of Philip Roth in Portnoy's Complaint," said the Erotic Review—and events well attended. (Thank you, Subterranean Books in St. Louis!) Then came Covid and that was the end of that. My last public event, February 1, 2020, at Books and Books, in Coral Gables, Florida, seems like it took place in another life.

 

In the midst of the pandemic, I was ready to forget about Bobby in Naziland. But the publisher, Headpress, had other ideas. They felt the title, which we originally saw as a darkly amusing tip of the hat to Mel Brooks and Alice in Wonderland, wasn't playing well while a virus was killing thousands of people every day. But they thought the book was too good to abandon, so they decided to try again with the new title.

 

I love the colorized cover. That's me, my father, and a neighbor's dog, around 1957, on Church Avenue in Brooklyn, down the block from my father's candy store, where much of the action takes place.

 

A Brooklyn Memoir is available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and from independent bookstores. Or if you need a Christmas gift now, Bobby in Naziland, destined to be a collector's item, remains in stock.

 

 

Speaking of second chances, The Village Voice, which had been around since 1955 but had ceased publication in 2018, was resurrected this year. I was happy to become a contributor. My story, "Mike Tree in John Lennon's Nutopia," started out on this blog as "Catch and Kill, Ono-Style?" That it found its way, after some revisions and additions, into a venerable publication is one more thing to celebrate.

 

Happy holidays to one and all!

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A Brooklyn Memoir is available for pre-order on Amazon and all other online booksellers.

 

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(An updated version of this article appears in The Village Voice.)

 

In March 1977, Michael Barbosa Medeiros, a freelance houseplant doctor, was at a party chatting with John Green, a professional tarot-card reader, also known as "Charlie Swan." Green told Medeiros about a possible job opening. A few days later he called Medeiros with the details: Go to apartment 72 in the Dakota, on West 72nd Street, in New York City.

 

Medeiros waited outside the apartment, puzzled by a brass plaque on the door that said "Nutopian Embassy." He'd never heard of that country. The door opened and a pony-tailed man holding a baby and dressed in cut-off jeans greeted Medeiros. "Hi, I'm John," he said. "You must be the tree man." He led Medeiros through a sprawling apartment to a sunny room with a few plants and trees. Then the man spoke at length about wanting to fill the room with more greenery. Medeiros recognized the voice. His potential employer was John Lennon. Though he found the ex-Beatle unpretentious and down to earth, he was stunned and awed to be in his presence. Later that day he met with Yoko Ono. She hired him.

 

Thus began Medeiros's stint as John and Yoko's houseplant doctor. Yoko soon gave him the additional responsibility of personal assistant.

 

John couldn't remember Michael's last name and began calling him "Mike Tree." At first they rarely spoke and Michael quietly went about his tasks. He built a terrarium. John liked it. Then, apparently intrigued by Michael's silence, John began asking him about his family and upbringing, especially his relationship with his father. He asked if he'd ever wanted to play music.

 

Michael told John that he'd always wanted to play the banjo. John gave him an old banjo that was lying around the Dakota.

 

A bond began to form between the Beatle and the houseplant doctor. Yoko didn't like it and threatened to fire Michael for talking to John, but she didn't.

 

John and Michael were both Libras, which John found significant. Michael was one year older, and John seemed to appreciate having an assistant who was close in age. (Most of the assistants were considerably younger.)

 

Michael's duties expanded to include setting up Yoko's recording equipment and organizing tapes of everything from John Green's daily tarot-card readings to, eventually, the recordings of the Double Fantasy sessions (microphones were left open at all times to capture everything spoken, sung, or played).

 

One day John telephoned Michael at home. He wanted to come by and see the abstract paintings Michael had told him he'd been working on. So John came to Michael's apartment and stayed for about an hour. Michael began to consider John a friend.

 

John was in Bermuda during the summer of 1980, composing songs for Double Fantasy. Michael joined him there. He found a small, disassembled sailboat in a shed on the property. He assembled it. The houseplant doctor and the ex-Beatle went sailing.

 

On December 8, 1980, John was murdered. Michael was one of the people who stood suicide watch over Yoko in the days that followed. In January 1981, she asked Michael, who'd remained freelance, to go on staff. Michael had refused numerous requests to do so, but this time he agreed. He resigned in June 1982, due, in part, to friction with Yoko's new partner, Sam Havadtoy. Yoko accused Michael of stealing the banjo John had given him.

 

Later that month, Michael, who'd never thought of himself as a writer, began jotting down his memories of John on a yellow legal pad—disorganized fragments and anecdotes. "Writing about John helped me grieve for him," he told me. "He was one cool guy. He did not take himself seriously. That somebody could be so wealthy and so smart and accomplished… it didn't mean shit to him. He didn't care."

 

Cover design by Sarah Phelps.

 

It wasn't until 2000, after taking a memoir-writing class, that Michael considered turning his notes into a book. It took him 15 more years to finish it. He called it Barefoot in Nutopia.

 

In May 2016, Jawbone Press, a small British publisher specializing in music books, expressed interest in Barefoot in Nutopia. Negotiations dragged on until finally a contract stipulating a $3,000 advance and publication in 2018 was drafted on November 1. But Jawbone soon backed out of the deal, claiming their distributor said the book wasn't a good fit with Jawbone's format—an odd decision considering books written by former Lennono employees have sold well. (See The Last Days of John Lennon by Fred Seaman, Dakota Days by John Green, and Loving John by May Pang.)

 

More likely, either Jawbone or the distributor had received a threatening letter from Ono's attorneys, who routinely send such letters to anybody planning to bring out an unauthorized or unflattering book. (It should be noted that Ono has never sued a writer for something they've written. It would be almost impossible for a public figure like Ono to win such a suit and the suit would bring more attention to the book in question.)

 

I've detailed the story behind Medeiros's memoir because it raises questions about what really happened with Jawbone Press. After backing out of a contract for a straightforward, uncontroversial memoir about one man's personal relationship with Lennon and Ono, why did Jawbone then acquire Peter Doggett's highly controversial book, Prisoner of Love, based on Doggett's reading of Lennon's stolen diaries? And why did Jawbone then cancel publication of that book just before it was scheduled to go to press?

 

Medeiros thinks Jawbone and Ono are involved in a catch-and-kill or catch-and-delay scheme. Catch and kill, a tactic Donald Trump and the National Enquirer made infamous, involves a media organization buying exclusive rights to a damaging story about a celebrity with the intention of never publishing it.

 

It's also possible that Jawbone is planning to publish Prisoner of Love after Ono's death.

 

Tom Seabrook, managing editor at Jawbone, wouldn't comment on Doggett's book but said that Jawbone neither acquired nor canceled Medeiros's book and reiterated what he told Medeiros's agent in 2016: "We withdrew our interest after consulting with our distributor, who felt the book would be a tough sell for a publisher of our size."

 

Doggett and Lennono-estate spokesman Elliot Mintz did not respond to requests for comment.

 

Medeiros, meanwhile, made a deal with Diversion Books to publish his memoir, now titled In Lennon's Garden, in May 2020. Though they'd paid him a $6,000 advance, Diversion, after receiving a threatening letter from Ono's attorneys, told Medeiros that they would not honor the original date but would instead publish the book at an unspecified future time. Medeiros asked Diversion to amend the contract to include a new publication date. Diversion refused and Medeiros has since requested the contract be terminated. The publisher has not responded.

 

Mike Tree remains in Limbono.

________

My latest book, Bobby in Naziland (soon to be re-titled A Brooklyn Memoir), is available on Amazon and all other online booksellers, as well as at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

¿CATCH AND KILL, ESTILO ONO?

(Este artículo también aparece en Proceso.) 

 

En marzo de 1977, Michael Barbosa Medeiros, un médico de plantas caseras independiente, estaba en una fiesta charlando con John Green, un lector profesional de cartas del tarot, también conocido como 'Charlie Swan'. Green le contó a Medeiros sobre una posible vacante laboral. Unos días después llamó a Medeiros con los detalles: Vaya al apartamento 72 en el Dakota, en West 72nd Street, en la ciudad de Nueva York.

 

Medeiros aguardaba en el exterior del apartamento, desconcertado por una placa de bronce en la puerta que decía 'Embajada de Nutopia'. Nunca había oído hablar de ese país. La puerta se abrió y un hombre con cola de caballo que sostenía a un bebé y vestido con pantalones cortos recortados saludó a Medeiros. «Hola, soy John», le dijo. «Tú debes ser el hombre árbol». Condujo a Medeiros a través de un amplio apartamento hasta una habitación soleada llena de plantas y árboles. Entonces el hombre habló extensamente y Medeiros reconoció la voz. Su empleador potencial era John Lennon. Aunque encontró al ex Beatle sin pretensiones y con los pies en la tierra, estaba aturdido y asombrado de estar en su presencia. Más tarde ese mismo día se reunió con Yoko Ono. Ella lo contrató.

 

Así comenzó el período de Medeiros como médico de plantas caseras de John y Yoko. Yoko pronto le dio la responsabilidad adicional de desempeñarse como asistente personal.

 

John no podía recordar el apellido de Michael y comenzó a llamarlo 'Mike Tree'. Al principio, rara vez hablaban y Michael se dedicó en silencio a sus tareas. Construyó un terrario. A John le gustó. Luego, aparentemente intrigado por el silencio de Michael, John comenzó a preguntarle sobre su familia y su educación, especialmente acerca de su relación con su padre. Preguntó si alguna vez había querido tocar un instrumento musical.

 

Michael le dijo a John que siempre había querido tocar el banjo. John le dio un viejo banjo que estaba tirado en el interior del Dakota.

 

Comenzó a formarse un vínculo entre el Beatle y el médico de plantas de interior. A Yoko no le gustó y amenazó con despedir a Michael por hablar con John, pero no lo hizo.

 

John y Michael eran ambos Libra, lo que a John le pareció significativo. Michael era un año mayor y John parecía apreciar tener un asistente de edad similar. (La mayoría de los asistentes eran considerablemente más jóvenes.)

 

Los deberes de Michael se ampliaron para incluir la instalación del equipo de grabación de Yoko y la organización de cintas de todo, desde las lecturas diarias de las cartas del tarot de John Green hasta, eventualmente, las grabaciones de las sesiones de Double Fantasy (los micrófonos se dejaron prendidos en todo momento para capturar todo lo hablado, cantado o tocado).

 

Un día, John telefoneó a Michael a su casa. Quería pasar y ver las pinturas abstractas en las que Michael le había dicho que había estado trabajando. Así que John vino al apartamento de Michael y se quedó durante una hora. Michael comenzó a considerar a John como un amigo.

 

John estuvo en las Bermudas durante el verano de 1980, componiendo canciones para Double Fantasy. Michael se unió a él allí. Encontró un pequeño velero desmontado en un cobertizo de la propiedad. Él lo ensambló. El doctor de plantas de interior y el ex Beatle se fueron a navegar.

 

El 8 de diciembre de 1980, John fue asesinado. Michael fue una de las personas que vigiló que Yoko no intentara suicidio en los días siguientes. En enero de 1981, le pidió a Michael, que seguía siendo autónomo, que se incorporara al personal. Michael había rechazado numerosas solicitudes para hacerlo, pero esta vez estuvo de acuerdo. Renunció en junio de 1982, debido, en parte, a fricciones con el nuevo socio de Yoko, Sam Havadtoy. Yoko acusó a Michael de robar el banjo que John le había dado.

 

Más tarde ese mes, Michael, que nunca se había considerado un escritor, comenzó a anotar sus recuerdos de John en un block de notas amarillo: fragmentos desorganizados y anécdotas. «Escribir sobre John me ayudó a expresar mi pena por él», me dijo. «Era un tipo genial. No se tomaba a sí mismo en serio. Que alguien pudiera ser tan rico, tan inteligente y logrado … no significaba una mierda para él. No le importaba». No fue hasta el 2000, después de tomar una clase de escritura de memorias, que Michael consideró convertir sus notas en un libro. Le tomó 15 años más terminarlo. Lo llamó Barefoot In Nutopia (Descalzo en Nutopia).

 

En mayo del 2016, Jawbone Press, una pequeña editorial británica especializada en libros de música, expresó interés en Barefoot in Nutopia. Las negociaciones se prolongaron hasta que finalmente el 1 de noviembre se redactó un contrato que estipulaba un anticipo de $ 3,000 y se pactó la publicación en el 2018. Pero Jawbone pronto se retiró del trato, alegando que su distribuidor dijo que el libro no encajaba bien con el formato de Jawbone, una decisión extraña considerando los libros escritos por ex empleados de Lennono se han vendido bien (basta ver los casos de The Last Days Of John Lennon de Fred Seaman, Dakota Days de John Green y Loving John de May Pang).

 

Lo más probable es que Jawbone o el distribuidor hayan recibido una carta amenazadora de los abogados de Ono, que envían habitualmente cartas de este tipo a cualquiera que planee sacar un libro no autorizado o poco halagador. (Cabe señalar que Ono nunca ha demandado a un escritor por algo que ha escrito. Sería casi imposible que una figura pública como Ono ganara una demanda así y la demanda llamaría más la atención sobre el libro en cuestión.)

 

He detallado la historia detrás de las memorias de Medeiros porque plantea preguntas sobre lo que realmente sucedió con Jawbone Press. Después de cancelar un contrato por unas memorias sencillas y sin controversias sobre la relación personal de un hombre con Lennon y Ono, ¿Por qué Jawbone adquirió el controvertido libro de Peter Doggett, Prisoner of Love, basado en la lectura de Doggett de los diarios robados de Lennon? ¿Y por qué Jawbone canceló la publicación de ese libro justo antes de la fecha prevista para su publicación?

 

Medeiros cree que Jawbone y Ono están involucrados en un plan de 'Catch- and-Kill' (capturar y matar [la historia]) o 'Catch-and-delay' (capturar y retrasar  [publicación de la historia]. 'Catch and Kill' , una táctica que Donald Trump y el National Enquirer hicieron infame, involucra a una organización de medios que compra los derechos exclusivos de una historia dañina sobre una celebridad con la intención de nunca publicarla. También es posible que Jawbone esté planeando publicar Prisoner of Love después de la muerte de Ono.

 

Tom Seabrook, editor gerente de Jawbone, no quiso comentar sobre el libro de Doggett, pero dijo que Jawbone ni adquirió ni canceló el libro de Medeiros y reiteró lo que le señaló al agente de Medeiros en 2016: «Retiramos nuestro interés después de consultar con nuestro distribuidor, quien tuvo la impresión  que el libro sería difícil de vender para una editorial de nuestro tamaño».

 

Doggett y el portavoz de Lennono, Elliot Mintz, no respondieron a las solicitudes de comentarios.

 

Mientras tanto, Medeiros hizo un trato con Diversion Books para publicar sus memorias, ahora tituladas In Lennon's Garden (En el Jardín de Lennon), en mayo del 2020. Aunque le habían pagado un anticipo de $ 6,000, Diversion, después de recibir una carta amenazante de los abogados de Ono, le dijo a Medeiros que ellos no honrarían la fecha original sino que publicarían el libro en un tiempo futuro no especificado. Medeiros pidió a Diversion que modificara el contrato para incluir una nueva fecha de publicación. Este pedido se negó y desde entonces Medeiros solicitó la rescisión del contrato. El editor no ha respondido.

 

'Mike Tree' permanece en el Limbo de Ono [Limbono].

________

Traducción y edición a cargo de Mundo Beatle para TodoBeatles.com, EGB Radio, BFC, Beatles & Solistas: Fans Perú, Club de los Beatles Todos Juntos Ahora y Facebook Fanpages amigas.

 

Robert Rosen es autor del libro Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon que se puede adquirir en Amazon tanto en edición en inglés como en español. También está disponible su más reciente libro Bobby In Naziland (que pronto será relanzado con el título A Brooklyn Memoir.

 

On Friday, March 12, my wife, Mary Lyn Maiscott, and I received our second Covid vaccinations at a Duane Reade a few blocks from where we live—Moderna for those keeping score.

 

Exactly one year after New York City went into lockdown we walked out of the drugstore feeling elated, facing the world as fully vaccinated people, awaiting a return to something approaching normalcy. To celebrate, we bought bread and little pizzas at the Sullivan Street Bakery.

 

People told us we were lucky to get vaccinated so quickly. I've no doubt. I know people in Florida and Missouri who drove hundreds of miles to be vaccinated. We've certainly been luckier than the nearly 540,000 Americans (more than 30,000 in New York City alone) who've died from Covid-19 and continue to die at a rate of about 1,400 per day. That only one person in my family, my 81-year-old uncle, succumbed to the disease is both tragic and miraculous. My mother, 94 and in an assisted-living facility in Florida, continues to endure, though I haven't seen her in more than a year.

 

I've spent that year mostly within the confines of my apartment with Mary Lyn and our cat, Oiseau, who seems to appreciate having us here 24/7 and will soon be in for a rude shock. The days have been a blur of routine and routine horror. April, the "cruelest month" as T.S. Elliot called it in "The Wasteland," more than lived up to its reputation in 2020.

• It was the month almost a thousand people a day in New York City died from Covid.

• It was the month the sound of ambulance sirens were heard round the clock and the sound of vuvuzelas and people banging on pots and pans to salute "essential workers" filled the air every evening at seven.

•  It was the month most of our building cleared out and we were the only ones left on the seventh floor.

• It was the month that one morning, before dawn, clad in latex gloves and a $3 face mask and armed with a small bottle of hard-to-find hand sanitizer, I ventured into a supermarket. On the checkout line, I saw, social-distancing behind me, a man wearing a gas mask, with the rest of his body, down to his shoes, wrapped in plastic garbage bags, his cart overflowing with carrots, potatoes, and onions. I felt as if I were in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie.

•  It was the month we stopped going to supermarkets.

•  It was the month we began washing our groceries with disinfectant.

•  It was the month I began studying a Covid map of the USA. A small corner of Montana had no cases. I wanted to be there.

•  It was the month we stopped taking the subway.

•  It was the month Mary Lyn began working from home, turning our couch and coffee table into her office.

•  It was the month I lived in a state of terror and didn't leave the house for days at a time.

•  It was the month that when I did emerge from my apartment, always early in the morning or late at night, when there were fewer people in the street, I felt enraged every time a maskless person came too close to me.

•  It was the month, while passing through Times Square, I saw only two people: the Naked Cowboy and a solitary tourist listening to him.

•  It was the month that every time my throat felt scratchy I thought it was the beginning of the end.

•  It was the month I became aware of the mobile morgues—refrigerated trucks and trailers—parked outside every hospital and couldn't walk past one without imagining the overflow of bodies inside.

•  It was the month my post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie became more of an Edgar Allan Poe story.

And that was only April.

 

As the months passed and the body count grew, every day I binge-watched the news, though it sometimes made me feel physically ill. I could barely believe I was living in a country that elected Donald Trump. For all the good it did (none), I began rage-tweeting at Trump in response to his endless flow of toxic inanities.

 

By May, as restaurants struggled to survive, our entire neighborhood, Soho, was transformed into one big outdoor café. It would have been nice to sit in one of those cafés and have a glass of wine if being around people didn't seem like such a bad idea.

 

Post-riot graffiti as literary criticism. Photo © Robert Rosen.

 

On a Saturday night at the end of May, after the murder of George Floyd, Soho was trashed and looted. The luxury stores and quaint restaurants were reduced to a jumble of smashed windows and boarded-up storefronts, some covered with graffiti, others with street art.

 

The pandemic played havoc with what I loosely call "my writing business." The European and West Coast events I was planning for Bobby in Naziland went by the wayside. My participation in a documentary, Did America Kill John Lennon?, and an event celebrating Lennon's 80th birthday, at Subterranean Books in St. Louis, were postponed indefinitely.

 

But some good news did emerge from our household: Being in lockdown gave me time to make progress on a new book, as yet untitled, about the 1970s. You can read a description here. And Mary Lyn released some new music, including a pandemic-inspired song, "I Can't Touch You (Supermoon)."

 

Then came the election. We lived through that, too.

 

Now I'm wondering if the widespread availability of vaccinations is the light at the end of the tunnel or just another oncoming train.

 

I'm betting on light. In a rare act of faith and optimism, I've rescheduled my Lennon event at Subterranean Books for October 7, 2021. I hope to see some of you there, well vaccinated and probably still masked.

________

My latest book, Bobby in Naziland, is available on Amazon and all other online booksellers, as well as at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

…today is the 37th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder. I’m going to commemorate it with a moment of silence.

... hoy es el 37º aniversario del asesinato de John Lennon. Voy a conmemorarlo con un momento de silencio. Read More 

(Updated Jan. 22.) I didn't write "Don Vicious." My inner 20-year-old punk-self wrote it, roused from suspended animation two weeks ago, after Donald J. Trump whined on Twitter that the cast of Hamilton should "immediately apologize to Mike Pence for their terrible behavior."

The cast had asked Pence, after he attended the show, to “uphold our American values” and “work on behalf of all of us.”

“Don Vicious” (with apologies to Sid) came to me whole as I was walking on the High Line. I imagine it performed in the style and spirit of Pussy Riot or of Sex Pistols front man Johnny Rotten singing “God Save the Queen/A fascist regime...”

I’m dedicating the song to John Lennon, who in his heart was a punk till the end (listen to “Serve Yourself”), who’s been gone 36 years today, and who would have appreciated Yoko Ono’s post-election Twitter howl—a howl that I’d suggest speaks for most of us.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “Don Vicious”...

We know you’re a total disgrace
Anyplace you show your face
We’ll fuck you up
We’ll put you down
Because you’re a malignant clown

Hey, hey Donald J.
How many girls did you grope today?
With your tiny hands
With your tiny hands

You’re a racist Nazi
Ignorant man
You steal from people
Your life’s a scam
You're like the spawn of Son of Sam

Hey, hey Donald J.
How many girls did you grope today?
With your tiny hands
With your tiny hands

You hate Muslims
You hate Jews
Women, black skin
Brown skin too

Hey, hey Donald J.
How many girls did you grope today?
With your tiny hands
With your tiny hands




I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter. Read More 

Mary Lyn Maiscott and I were married at the Municipal Building in New York City in the aftermath of 9/11. The ceremony was broadcast live on The Louie B. Free Radio Show. Soon after our 15th anniversary, we returned to the show to talk about our marriage, 9/11, my books, and Mary Lyn's music. In the ensuing years, the radio show has evolved into Louie TV. Here's a memorable hour that was broadcast live from New York on Wednesday morning, November 2.

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

 Read More 

If you haven’t seen it yet, today, October 9, which would have been John Lennon's 76th birthday, is the perfect day to watch The Beatles: Eight Days a Week—The Touring Years, Ron Howard’s documentary, which primarily covers the group from 1962–1966. Though much of the material might seen overly familiar to people who’ve been following the Fab Four since 1964 (or earlier), there are some newly uncovered tidbits, like footage from their final show at Candlestick Park, that add more depth and detail to one of the best known stories of the 20th century.

My favorite part of the film was the rooftop concert at Apple Records—they play “Don’t Let Me Down” and “I’ve Got a Feeling.” The impromptu performance took place in 1969 (making the film’s title a misnomer). It was the last time the Beatles played together, and yes, I’ve seen it many times before (it’s in Let It Be). But the crisply restored sound and video gave the scene an electrifying energy that came though despite the fact that I was watching it on a small computer screen. I’d recommend seeing it at a theatre to get the full effect.

And if you’d like a bracingly fresh perspective on Lennon and the Beatles, may I also recommend Nowhere Man, now available as an e-book in English and Spanish.

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

Si tú no lo has visto todavía, hoy, 9 de octubre, el que habría sido el 76 cumpleaños de John Lennon, es el día perfecto para ver Los Beatles: Ocho días a la semana, los años de gira, el documental de Ron Howard, que cubre principalmente al grupo de 1962 a 1966. Aunque mucho del material podría parecer demasiado familiar, para las personas que han estado siguiendo a los Cuatro fabulosos desde 1964 (o antes), hay algunas golosinas recién descubiertas, como el metraje de su último concierto en Candlestick Park, que agrega más profundidad y detalle a una de las historias más conocidas del siglo 20.

Mi parte favorita de la película fue el concierto en la azotea de Apple Records, ellos tocan “Don’t Let Me Down” y “I’ve Got a Feeling.” La actuación improvisada tuvo lugar en 1969 (haciendo el título de la película no apropiado). Fue la última vez que los Beatles tocaron juntos, y sí, yo lo he visto muchas veces antes (está en Let It Be). Pero el sonido y el video nítidamente restaurados dan a la escena una energía electrizante, que me llega a través, a pesar del hecho de que yo lo estaba viendo en la pequeña pantalla de la computadora. Yo recomendaría verlo en un cine para conseguir el efecto completo.

Y si tú desearas una perspectiva fresca vigorizante de Lennon y los Beatles, yo puedo asimismo recomendarte Nowhere Man, ahora disponible como e-book en inglés y español.

Te invito a unirte a mí en Facebook o a seguirme en Twitter.

 Read More 

On this 35th anniversary of John Lennon's assassination, I'm finding it difficult not to think about guns. But it seems that anything I could say about them has already been said repeatedly by people far more conversant with the issue than I am.

Is there anything to be gained by expressing my disgust with the NRA, who apparently believe that everybody over the age of three should be armed; the Congress, who are on the take from the NRA; and the menagerie of candidates running for the Republican presidential nomination, one of whom, a medical doctor, has said, “I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away”?

I doubt it.

In Nowhere Man, I explain that Mark David Chapman acquired the handgun he used to murder Lennon by telling a lie on his pistol-permit application. He said he’d never been institutionalized for mental illness, when, in fact, he had. But nobody did a background check, and Marky got his gun.

Of Chapman’s delusional act, I wrote, “Nobody has ever assassinated a popular entertainer before. This is completely different, a new kind of madness. It’s very scary shit.”

Thirty-five years later, this “very scary shit” has gone well beyond assassinating popular entertainers. I now live in a country that’s in the throes of a guerrilla war being waged by terrorists and unaffiliated crazies of all stripes and their supporters in the NRA, Congress, and on the campaign trail.

The other night, my wife and I were eating dinner in a crowded restaurant that we’ve been going to for years. And though I didn’t say a word about it at the time because I didn’t want to ruin the meal, I kept glancing out the window and thinking that this is probably not a good place to eat anymore. The restaurant, situated on a wide avenue that branches off into a warren of streets and provides easy access to bridges and tunnels, is a good target for somebody who wants to do a mass shooting and escape. It’s better to eat in a restaurant on a narrow side street prone to traffic jams—I thought that would be a less inviting target.

This is what it’s come to in the land of the free and the home of the brave—everybody walking around thinking about how to avoid being shot and how to protect yourself when the shooting starts. And though it would be nice if Yoko Ono’s “Imagine Peace” were something more than a cliché as absurd as the Republicans’ offering “thoughts and prayers” to victims of the latest massacre, it’s not.

It’s going to take a lot more than imagination and prayer to solve the problems of a country where at last count there were more guns (357 million) than people (317 million).

In 2015, we are all at least as vulnerable as John Lennon was, and he was more vulnerable than he ever imagined. Read More 

Before Ozy called to talk about the history of pornography in America, I'd never heard of them. But that's not surprising. So fragmented and expansive is the media today, even a high-profile news site can slip beneath my radar.

In any case, adhering to my philosophy of treating like Oprah everybody who wants to talk about my books, I spoke at length to Ozy, and when they ran the story, "How Nixon Shaped Porn in America," about the connection between Watergate and Nixon's efforts to ban the film Deep Throat, I was amazed by the results.

Not only was Beaver Street prominently featured, but the story was shared a respectable 1,760 times (and counting) on Facebook; was published in the popular German tabloid Bild as “Mister President wollte eigentlich das Gegenteil ... Wie Nixon dem Porno zum Durchbruch verhalf” (roughly translated as “Mr. President wanted the opposite of it... how Nixon helped porn to its breakthrough”); and was cited in the Washington Post and Baltimore City Paper.

That Beaver Street has remained in the news for more than four years in an environment where just about everything is forgotten within 24 hours is nothing short of miraculous. But apparently, that’s how long it’s taken the media to catch on to one of the book’s central themes: The biggest crooks—notably Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Edwin Meese, and Charles Keating—cry “Ban pornography!” the loudest.

And speaking of books that people keep talking about long after publication, on Tuesday, July 21, at 10 P.M eastern time, and Saturday July 25, at 2:30 P.M. eastern time, the Reelz channel will broadcast the John Lennon episode of Hollywood Scandals, in which I discuss my Lennon bio, Nowhere Man. Click here to find the show on your cable or satellite system.

 Read More 

If you get the reference in the title, then you're probably of a certain age--an age of turntables, vinyl LPs, and the Beatles as an ongoing musical enterprise.

If you're not of a certain age, you've still probably heard about a rumor that began in 1969. Some people believed that Paul McCartney was dead and the Beatles had replaced him with a look-alike so the fans wouldn't get upset. But because they were the Beatles, and couldn't resist playing Beatle games, they'd also left clues to his demise on their albums, both in the music and on the album covers.

One of the most famous clues can be found on the fadeout of John Lennon’s “Strawberry Fields Forever.” It sounds as if Lennon is saying, “I buried Paul.” (“I’m very bored,” is what he claims to have said.)

I mention this now because a site called Ranker is asking people to vote for the “most outlandish conspiracy theory” about the Beatles, and “Paul Is Dead” is among the 22 theories they’ve listed.

But so am I!

A Holocaust-denying conspiracy theorist has been insisting for years that I’m the CIA spymaster who ordered a hit on Lennon—or at least that’s what he seems to be saying if you delve deeply into his insane ramblings. It’s as if a conspiracy theorist is having my (Evil) Walter Mitty fantasies for me.

Ranker calls this theory “Robert Rosen, Author or Assassin?” And I have indeed buried Paul under a landslide of votes.

Yes, I am the #1 most outlandish Beatles conspiracy theory and Dead Paul is #2. This is like Bernie Sanders getting the nomination over Hillary Clinton.

So, I’d like to thank all the people who voted for me, and my campaign manager, Mary Lyn Maiscott. But keep in mind that this is only a fast start, and as long as Ranker exists, people can keep voting. Which means if Live Paul ever rallies his base for Dead Paul, “Robert Rosen: Author or Assassin?” will go the way of Michael Dukakis.

In the meantime, call me Jackal.

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One of the problems with writing a book and then preparing it for submission to publishers is that it's an extraordinarily time-consuming process. Take into account that I also have a demanding freelance gig, and there are simply not enough hours in the week to tend to blogging, Facebooking, and tweeting, at least if I want to have something resembling a life. Which is why it's been two months since I've posted anything new on this blog. But I am still here and I know some people have missed me.

So, aside from the book, what’s been happening since January 12? Here are a half-dozen highlights:

Like everybody else in the northeast, I’ve been getting through the winter, which can’t end soon enough, though I’ve not been letting the cold or the snow interfere with my daily walks by the Hudson River, which on some days might be mistaken for the Northwest Passage.

My wife and I spent a week in Florida, visiting my mother and being tourists in Miami. It was warmer there, I went swimming every day, and at no point was I forced to stand my ground.

For a brief moment, Beaver Street was the #1 porn book on Amazon Germany and Nowhere Man was the #1 Beatles book on Amazon Canada. Is it too soon to declare them both cult classics?

Quadrant, a conservative Australian literary journal, cited Nowhere Man in an essay comparing John Lennon to Russell Brand. The conservative media’s 15-year embrace of my work, using it to prove whatever point they’re trying to prove, continues to be a source of astonishment.

In my blog post about Charlie Hebdo, I wrote about the artist who, in the 1970s, had drawn a pornographic cartoon as a way of expressing his discontent with the Catholic Church. I’d published the drawing in Observation Post, the City College newspaper I was editing at the time. Major controversy ensued. Well, the artist read the post, and contacted me. We got together for the first time since 1974. He’s still an artist. And he’s still crazy after all these years. But so am I.

I woke up one morning to find that the porn star Stoya, whom the Village Voice had described on their cover as “The Prettiest Girl in New York,” had mentioned Beaver Street in a blog post. If I could have picked three people on planet Earth to read and appreciate Beaver Street, Stoya would have been among them, alongside Philip Roth and Joan Didion. So, I tweeted her a thank you and she tweeted back, “Thank you for writing it. Amazing glimpse into the adult industry.” Say what you will about Stoya, but I’ll say this much: The girl gives good blurb.

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I'm not in the habit of discussing here, at least on a daily basis, the book I'm currently working on. But there are references to Bobby in Naziland on this blog dating back to October 2011, so it's hardly a secret that I've been writing a novel. And if you were one of the people who attended Bloomsday on Beaver Street II, in 2013, then you heard me read the opening pages of the book and have a sense of what it's about: a child's view of Brooklyn in the 1950s and '60s.

I haven’t posted here in nearly four weeks because I’ve been working on revisions for Bobby in Naziland, and it’s taken up what little free time I’ve had. Also, in the middle of doing those revisions, the British government passed a new censorship law, and The Independent, apparently fans of Beaver Street, asked me to write about it. The piece I wrote, “No Female Ejaculation, Please, We’re British,” went viral and was then picked up by Dagospia, an Italian political-gossip site. This was one of my two major-media highlights of 2014. (The other was an appearance on the John Lennon episode of Hollywood Scandals, which ran multiple times on the Reelz Channel.)

So, here it is, Boxing Day, Henry Miller’s birthday, and the day after Christmas—the traditional time to reflect on the year gone by. Judging by the horror that smacks me in the face every morning when I foolishly pick up the newspaper because it’s lying outside my door, 2014 seems to have been little more than a series of catastrophies. No need to innumerate them here; we both know what they are. Which is why I’m going to take a moment to feel especially grateful that I’ve gotten through this year relatively unscathed. Also, I’m going to put aside my cynicism for a day or two and look to 2015 with a sense of hope.

Call me crazy.

In the meantime, happy holidays to all, and I’ll see you next year, if not sooner!

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As always happens around the anniversary of John Lennon's murder, which occurred 34 years ago on December 8, people want to talk to me about my Lennon bio, Nowhere Man. This year, three interviews are on tap.

The first one, tomorrow, Wednesday, December 3, at 7 PM ET, will be a live interview on The Time Warped Hour, Daniel Zuckerman’s radio show broadcast out of Purchase College. You can listen live here, listen to a podcast here, or get more information about the show on its Facebook page.

Also on December 3, at 11 PM ET, the Reelz Channel (128 TWC and 233 Verizon, in Manhattan) will rebroadcast the Lennon episode of Hollywood Scandals. Look for me in the opening minutes of the show and again in the final part, when I discuss Lennon’s years of seclusion in the Dakota, and his killer, Mark David Chapman. Hollywood Scandals is available coast-to-coast in the U.S. at 10 PM CT, 9 PM MT, and 8 PM PT. Click here to find the Reelz Channel on your local cable or satellite system, and remember to set your DVRs, as the show is not available on demand.

Finally, on Sunday, December 14, at 6 PM ET, I’ll be appearing live on Octavio Cavalli’s recently launched Internet radio show, Lennoncast. Broadcasting out of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Cavalli, author of the comprehensive Spanish-language Lennon bio Bendito Lennon, will be interviewing me in English and simultaneously translating our conversation into Spanish, which is a pretty good trick. You can listen live here, or download the podcast here.

Hope you can tune in to one or all of these shows.

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I'm probably not the best audience for Lennon: Through a Glass Onion, the jukebox musical that opened this week at the Union Square Theatre, in New York. But the fault isn't with the show; it's with me, and it's strictly a case of having been marinated in Beatles music, lore, and literature for more than a half-century and having written a John Lennon bio, Nowhere Man, after transcribing and editing the personal diaries that Lennon kept from 1975 until his death in 1980. The problem is that I've heard it all before, and what I want from a show like this is to hear something new and unexpected.

John R. Waters, an Australian film and TV star, is not (thank God) a Lennon impersonator. Rather than wearing a wig and the trademark glasses, he portrays the ex-Beatle as he might have been had he lived and, at age 64 or so, decided to perform in intimate venues, singing his classic songs and explaining the inspiration behind them. Waters and Stewart D’Arrietta, whose piano playing is the musical driving force behind this stripped-down production, have been doing the show for 22 years, and, not surprisingly, they’ve got it down cold (turkey).

In this alternate Glass Onion reality, the AARP-ified Walrus—clad in a black leather jacket and black jeans, and enveloped in a mist that perhaps suggests the limbo between life and death—shares his thoughts on Mark David Chapman, his would-be assassin, suggesting that he must have listened to a lot of Beatles music, which, in fact, he did.

As Waters strums an acoustic guitar and D’Arrietta pounds on the piano (and occasionally harmonizes), the duo work their way through either snippets or complete renditions of more than 30 selections from the Lennon-solo and Lennon-McCartney songbooks, including such favorites as “A Day in the Life,” “Help,” “Imagine,” and “Watching the Wheels.”

Waters intersperses the music with wittily told stories and quips (mostly lifted from interviews, though sometimes made up) about Lennon’s rivalry with Paul McCartney, the bigger-than-Jesus blowup, his relationship with Yoko Ono, meditating with the Maharishi, the birth of his son Sean, and the so-called househusband years. And he indeed gives a good sense of what it might have been like to listen to Lennon. His performance demonstrates the absurdity of Ono’s contention that her third husband was so complex, no one actor could portray him—a notion she brought to life in the 2005 Broadway catastrophe Lennon, in which nine actors, both men and women, took turns playing Lennon and ultimately communicated no sense of who he was or what his life was like.

Just once, however, I’d like to see Lennon portrayed in a way that goes beyond retelling the most famous stories and does not totally buy into the bread-baking househusband myth. Show him in his final years as the tormented, secluded, confused, and jealous man that he was. Show him continuing his affair with May Pang after he went home to Yoko, and carrying a torch for May until the day he died. Show him as a contradictory man who longed to follow the path of Jesus but also dabbled in the occult, loved money, smoked a lot of weed, lost his muse, and then regained it after an epic creative struggle.

It would have been great to hear Waters sing some of the lesser-known Lennon songs that illuminate this reality, like “Serve Yourself,” complete with the spoken-word primal meltdown of “Youse fuckin’ kids all the fuckin’ same...” which was directed at his older son, Julian.

Apparently, though, this isn’t what most Lennon fans want. They want to hear the most famous songs, and judging by the audience reaction, Waters and D’Arrietta gave the people exactly what they wanted, straight up and with fresh energy.

Even so, it’s hard not to see Lennon: Through a Glass Onion as a poignantly sad reminder of what can never be again and what so many people, myself included, have tried so hard to keep alive throughout these ever more dispiriting times.

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Still waiting for my mother to weigh in--she'll probably object to my not having worn a sport jacket--but I do appreciate all the positive feedback I've been getting about my appearance this week on the John Lennon episode of Hollywood Scandals. Most of the critiques have been delivered to my face (no "book"), with a significant portion coming via e-mail and telephone.

My favorite comment: "Your shirt was terrific too."

For that I give full credit to Mary P. Fox, who selected the shirt in a second-hand store in Santa Barbara and persuaded my wife, Mary Lyn Maiscott, to buy it for me. I'd also like to thank Salvatore Ferragamo, who designed it. Read More 

Should you find yourself in front of a TV tonight, Thursday, August 21, you might want to check out the Reelz channel at 9 P.M. ET or 8 P.M. CT. I'm going to be on a show called Hollywood Scandals, talking about John Lennon and his killer, Mark David Chapman.

I pop up eight times altogether, three times quickly in the opening minutes and five more times, somewhat more substantially, towards the end.

The episode is an accurate and surprisingly evenhanded rundown of Lennon’s life and death. But as the name of the show implies, they don’t hesitate to highlight the numerous “scandals” that punctuated his life—the “bigger than Jesus” controversy; leaving his first wife, Cynthia, for Yoko Ono; and his affair with May Pang, for example.

There is, however, nothing salacious about the presentation. Like Detective Joe Friday on Dragnet, which was also set in L.A., Hollywood Scandals wants “just the facts,” wherever they may lead.

It’s rare that I’m given the opportunity to talk about Lennon on national TV, and it’s extraordinary that they’ve allowed me to mention his diaries or any of the details of his final years, before he emerged from seclusion to record Double Fantasy. So this is must-see TV for Lennon fans, and especially for the ever-growing community of Nowhere Man readers.

Using the hashtag #HWDScandals, I’ll be making every effort to live-tweet the show.

In New York City, Reelz is 128 on Time Warner cable; you can click here to find it on your cable or satellite system.

The Lennon episode will also air on the following days:

Sunday, August 24 at 12 P.M. ET
Monday, August 25 at 2 A.M. ET
Thursday, August 28 at 8 P.M. ET

Hope you can all come together and watch this one.

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Last December, Roberto Ponce, an editor at the Mexico City newsweekly Proceso, sent me four questions about the numerous conspiracy theories surrounding John Lennon's murder. A comprehensive Spanish-language Lennon biography, Bendito Lennon, by Octavio Cavalli, had recently been published and the book gave credence to one of the theories. My answers to Ponce's questions ran as a column, titled "Sólo creo en una conspiración: la de Yoko Ono en mi contra" (I just believe in one conspiracy: Yoko Ono's against me), in a special Lennon section in their December 8, 2013 issue.

My blog posting yesterday, "Imagine Yoko Watching," about an upcoming Lennon episode of Hollywood Scandals that I’ll be appearing in provoked a flurry of questions on Facebook about the conspiracy theories.

Here are Ponce's questions and my answers in the original English.

1) Octavio Cavalli, author of the biography Bendito Lennon, told me that one of his important sources of information about John Lennon’s murder is an article by Salvador Astucia, “José Joaquín Sanjeanis Perdomo: John Lennon’s true assassin?” In another one of his articles, Astucia has accused you, Mr. Robert Rosen, of being involved in the killing of John Lennon. What can you say about this?

I’m aware that Octavio Cavalli has thoroughly researched every aspect of John Lennon’s murder and for a variety of reasons doesn’t believe that Mark Chapman was the lone gunman. Among the issues Cavalli raises is the presence at the murder scene of Dakota doorman José Joaquín Sanjeanis Perdomo, a Cuban exile and former CIA agent, according to “Salvador Astucia,” which is the pseudonym of a Holocaust-denying conspiracy theorist. Astucia says, among other things too numerous to recount here, that I’m the Zionist-funded CIA spymaster who gave the order to kill Lennon, after which, in order to disgrace his memory (as well as the entire antiwar movement), the CIA then paid me to write Nowhere Man. He also says that I, along with another Jew, Edward Teller, the “Father of the H-bomb,” and Ronald Reagan, felt that Lennon had to die (and his memory besmirched) so America could go forward with its “Star Wars” missile-defense initiative.

The mere fact that Astucia is still alive is proof enough that his theories are absurd. Because if anything he said were true, a real spymaster would have silenced him 10 years ago, when he started posting this stuff online.

I don’t know if Astucia says these things because he believes them, or to provoke and to get attention. My inclination is to dismiss outright everything he or any other Holocaust denier says about anything. That Cavalli was able to find one shred of truth in Astucia’s insane ravings is a tribute to Cavalli’s tenaciousness, and his abilities as a researcher.

Though I must give Astucia full credit for my inclusion as number two, alongside J. D. Salinger and Stephen King, on a list titled “Top Three Conspiracy Theories Revolving Around the Death of John Lennon.”

And I’m sure that he’d be pleased to know that I briefly considered dedicating to him the novel I just finished writing, Bobby in Naziland, about a kid growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s and early-60s, alongside Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans who’d fought the Nazis. That dedication would have read: “For ______, my Personal Nazi, who reminded me I was a Jew and taught me anew the meaning of anti-Semitism.”

2) What do you think of the conspiracy theories that accuse the CIA, FBI, various ex-presidents of the U.S., Operation 40, and even the Jewish people of being behind Lennon’s murder?

I don’t completely reject all conspiracy theories. I’ve had 50 years to think about JFK, and the official explanation still strikes me as less than satisfying. But I don’t think Lennon was the victim of a conspiracy. I think Chapman was a lone nut, and I think if Yoko Ono believed that Lennon’s murderer, or an accomplice to the murder was still at large, she’d have conducted a private investigation—for her own safety. She’s done nothing of the sort.

I think most conspiracy theories—Manchurian Candidates, for example—are based on scenarios so complex, they’d be nearly impossible to execute. My understanding of the psychology behind conspiracy theories is that certain people cannot accept the fact that horrendous events, like murder, can be totally random and can happen to anybody. So they need to invent fairy tales, impervious to rational evidence, that give them a sense of control and show that it can’t happen to them. That’s why Astucia is the only so-called “journalist” I’ve ever refused to speak to. Because no matter what I told him, he’d use it as further “proof” that I work for the CIA and that I did order Lennon’s murder.

There is, however, one Lennon-related conspiracy I am aware of: The unsuccessful attempt by Ono, the New York District Attorney’s office, and G. Barry Golson, a former Playboy editor, to have me arrested on criminal conspiracy charges unless I signed a document forfeiting my First Amendment rights to write about Lennon’s diaries. The libelous article that Golson ran in the March 1984 Playboy is the root of all Lennon conspiracy theories about me. He took a comment from my diary (which Ono had given to him), about what I saw as Ono’s skillful exploitation of the Lennon legacy, and depicted that comment, “Dead Lennons=BIG $$$$$,” as my indictment of my own behavior, portraying me as a criminal conspirator drooling over Lennon’s corpse.

3) In your book Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon you created an interesting profile of Mark Chapman’s mind. How has your vision of the killer changed since then? Why did he kill John Lennon? Did he commit the crime alone or maybe not?

My vision of Mark Chapman has not changed since I wrote Nowhere Man. I still think he was a mentally unstable and possibly psychotic individual who acted alone and was motivated by envy and a desire to be famous, and believed that by shooting Lennon, whom he considered a hypocrite, he’d literally vanish into the pages of The Catcher in the Rye and become The Catcher in the Rye for his generation. I await definitive proof that this is not the case.

4) After your experience with the Lennon diaries, what ideas would you suggest to the new generation of Latin American students about how they can be more effective in their work and lives?

In 1982, I was an obscure freelance writer who’d uncovered a story that was the equivalent of Rock ’n’ Roll Watergate. That’s why it took me 18 years to publish what I knew about Lennon’s diaries. In the eyes of the mainstream media, in any country, it’s simply unacceptable for an unknown journalist to come out of nowhere and break the story of the decade. Also, what I learned from the diaries went against the myth that Ono remains determined to perpetuate—that in his final years, John Lennon was a content, bread-baking househusband. That’s why she used all the political and media influence at her disposal to try and stop me. So, I’d say to any journalism students that it’s not enough to uncover a great story, especially one that goes against powerful people or institutions (as great stories often do). You must be prepared to fight for years, if not decades, to get your story out to a mass audience. I’d also say that anybody who’s considering investigating conspiracy theories should be aware that you’re walking into a swamp that you may never come out of. Or if you do make it out, you’ll emerge with a bag of half-answers, shadows, suspicions, and more questions than you took in there with you.

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There's a show on the Reelz channel--128 on Time Warner cable in New York City--called Hollywood Scandals. In April, in L.A., they interviewed me for almost two hours about my John Lennon bio, Nowhere Man, going over the book point by point. It's the most comprehensive Nowhere Man discussion I've had with any media organization in the 14 years the book has been in print.

The show is scheduled to be broadcast on the following dates:

Thursday, August 21 at 9 P.M. ET
Friday, August 22 at 12 A.M. ET
Sunday, August 24 at 12 P.M. ET
Monday, August 25 at 2 A.M. ET

Here’s a capsule summary of the Lennon episode, taken from the Hollywood Scandals Website:

John Lennon is one of the most influential and important artists in music history. But the public face of peace, love, and revolution is a mask. Behind his righteous persona is a troubled man crippled by a traumatic childhood. John Lennon buries the pain of abandonment by spending his whole life building a myth. And when the private truth became public, it ultimately cost him everything.

I don’t know how much or which parts of my interview they used or who else they interviewed. I do know that during my interview the chemistry was right and I settled into a good story-telling groove.

I hope you’ll watch the show, and I hope to live-tweet at least one of the broadcasts.

And while I’m on the subject of Lennon, I want to send out a big thanks to the 6,074 (at last count) people on Facebook who liked the Nowhere Man Wiki mirror page. I’m sure you’ll all be watching.

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"House of Secrets" was originally published, under a different title, on a Florida-based design website that no longer exists. Some of the information in this article is drawn from my book Nowhere Man, in which I write in detail about John Lennon and Yoko Ono's stay in this Palm Beach mansion. In the book, I misspell "El Solano," calling it "El Salano." Should there be future editions, this will be corrected.

On March 6, 1978, a white-supremacist serial killer, outraged by an interracial photo spread in Hustler, pumped a .44-caliber bullet into Larry Flynt near the Georgia courthouse where the magazine publisher, on trial for obscenity, had just testified in his own defense. One year later Flynt, paralyzed from the waist down because of his injuries, rented the house at 720 South Ocean Boulevard--or S.O.B., as the locals call it--in Palm Beach. His landlady, socialite Brownie McLean, would have much preferred to sell the 10,000-square-foot white elephant known as El Solano. But in those grim days of hyperinflation and gas lines, there were no takers, not even the recession-proof Flynt. So McLean, who had once refused the Hope Diamond as a wedding gift from her husband because she believed the jewel was cursed, didn't hesitate to accept a much-needed cash infusion from the man who introduced "split beaver" to a mass audience.

Most of Flynt’s neighbors took the porn publisher’s presence in stride—even though it was common knowledge that he employed a team of photographers to shoot X-rated pictorials throughout the Spanish-style mansion’s six bedrooms, five servant rooms, ballroom, and sauna, as well as by the square “morning pool” and rectangular “afternoon pool.”

Through a spokesperson, Flynt has declined to offer any more information about his season in El Solano.

The current owners of El Solano also prefer not to discuss their winter residence—though they do say, through a spokesperson, that it’s “public knowledge” that they own it, and that it’s permissible to publish their names. Apparently, this wasn’t the case in 1993 when the extensive renovations of architect Darby Curtis, working with designer Robert Metzger, were documented in Architectural Digest—the most detailed and elaborate El Solano pictorial on record. The owners were quoted anonymously, and the story failed to mention that they were the architect’s parents: Alan Curtis, an investment banker, and Christine Curtis, a freelance writer, who had bought the house in January 1990 for $4,315,000, though it’s not publicly known from whom. More surprising than this was Darby Curtis’s reaction when asked if she might shed some additional light on her work at the historic abode: “I have nothing to say.”

Perhaps Curtis’s reticence is best explained by others who’ve worked in the house, some of whom were willing to speak (anonymously) of the fact that in a small community like Palm Beach, those whose livelihoods depend on access to the super-rich—and occasionally super-famous—would be foolish to make unwanted revelations about their employers (or parents). But in the same breath these people also speak of the house’s strangeness, of their belief that things have happened in El Solano that those who have lived there simply don’t want to talk about.

In a way, El Solano exists in the realm of the mystical, a piece of unreal estate—a mansion with a long history of secrets, celebrated owners, and at least one profound occurrence that changed the course of rock ’n’ roll.

The first person to live in El Solano was the man who built it in 1919, controversial “society” architect—many considered his designs hideous—Addison Mizner, who named it both for the hot Mediterranean winds that blow through Spain, and El Solano County, California, where he was born in 1872. A mythical figure whose 11-foot-tall statue now stands in Boca Raton, a city he helped develop, and whose Mediterranean Revival style came to define the look of Worth Avenue, the six-foot-two, 250-pound Mizner settled in Palm Beach apparently for health reasons.

(Stephen Sondheim has chronicled the Florida misadventures of Mizner and his flimflamming business-partner brother, Wilson, in his musical Road Show, which portrays both Mizners as incestuous, Addison as homosexual, and in the end, according to The New York Times, reduces the brothers to “cocaine-snorting wrecks.”)

Though Mizner’s Villa Flora, which he built for J.P. Morgan, and La Guerida, which became John F. Kennedy’s “Winter White House,” may be better known than El Solano, the latter is regarded as the purest expression of Mizner’s chaotic vision—a “stream of consciousness” consisting of idiosyncratically connected spaces, as designer Michael Christiano, who also worked on the 1993 renovations, described the house to Architectural Digest.

The house so intrigued next-door neighbor Harold Vanderbilt, grandson of railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, that he bought it from Mizner and added on—as did many of the successive celebrity owners, such as actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who briefly settled into El Solano in 1973 with his second wife, Mary Lee Hartford, heir to the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company fortune.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono, too, were taken by the house, and on the advice of their tarot card reader, whom they called Charlie Swan, Patric Walker’s Town & Country horoscope, and Cheiro’s Book of Numbers, bought it—on January 27, 1980, for a million dollars, a price they considered a steal. (“John made the tea, while Yoko hammered out the negotiations,” real estate broker Ben Johnson told The Palm Beach Post.)

In years to come, many stories about the ex-Beatle’s El Solano activities would filter into the public domain—a rare breaching of the house’s shield of secrecy. Most of them were inconsequential, such as details about Lennon’s ongoing feud with Paul McCartney, reports of an ugly incident that occurred when the actor Peter Boyle and his wife came to visit, and tales of locals stopping Lennon on the beach, without realizing who he was, to talk about the historically cold weather that February. But one story of significance would emerge as well: After five years of musical silence, it was in El Solano that Lennon reconnected with his muse, which many in his inner circle had given up for dead.

On February 27, 1980, Lennon and Ono were watching the Grammy Awards in the den when Bob Dylan came on to sing his latest hit, “Serve Someone,” which says it doesn’t matter who you are, you’re going to have to serve either Satan or God. The song provoked from Lennon a spontaneous musical explosion called “Serve Yourself.” Accompanying himself on guitar, Lennon lashed out at everything and everybody: Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Krishna, his sons, his mother—the world, the universe. And this song soon primed a flood of new material that seven months later appeared on Lennon and Ono’s album Double Fantasy. (“Serve Yourself,” which Ono considered too raw, obscene, and off-message for public consumption, wouldn’t be released for another 19 years.)

On December 8, 1980, Double Fantasy was riding high on the charts. That night, John Lennon, aged 40, was shot to death by a deranged fan in front of the Dakota, his apartment building on West 72nd Street in New York City. Among the candlelight vigils held throughout the world, one took place outside El Solano, which Ono kept until 1986, adding on to its chaotic sprawl and then selling it for a numerologically harmonious $3.15 million to a Bostonian family that preferred to remain anonymous.

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The Internet is filled with thousands of Beatles forums--online communities where people can log in and discuss the Fab Four. DM's Beatles Forums, Steve Hoffman Music Forums, BeatleLinks, and rec.music.beatles are among the multitude of sites I've browsed over the decades.

If John Lennon were alive today, I think he'd enjoy posting anonymously on some of these forums, and I'm certain that whatever he said would be greeted with comments far less generous than, "You don't know shit about the Beatles!"

That's because Beatles forums tend to be vipers’ nests of ignorance and hostility, with the most vicious comments coming from the people who know the least. May Pang, for example, used to post in rec.music.beatles, but was driven off the site by malicious attacks on virtually everything she said.

The most scathing reviews of Nowhere Man that I’ve seen anywhere have been posted by people who proudly declare, “I’ve never read the book. I don’t have to. I know what’s in it.”

Last night, inspired by the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, I was browsing one of the more civilized forums, Beatles Bible, when I came across a comment that shocked me. Going against the usual party line of “Nowhere Man bad!” somebody who uses the moniker “10centwings” indulged in a bit of independent thought. Softening his or her post with the standard caveat about reading it “with one eyebrow raised,” 10centwings said, “I’m 1/3 through the Rosen book…. This one’s a page turner. I actually lunched in today just so that I could sneak in an extra hour of reading.”

A comment like this, from a “real” reader, in a forum that’s usually hostile to the book reminds me yet again why Nowhere Man endures 14 years after publication. And though the controversy will probably never cease, more people are beginning to see the book for what it is.

I can hardly wait till Nowhere Man’s 50th anniversary.

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Thirty years ago today, on January 27, 1984, Yoko Ono released Milk and Honey, the album she and John Lennon were working on the night of December 8, 1980, hours before Lennon was murdered. In commemoration of this anniversary, NME, the venerable British music mag, has run a cover story about Lennon and the LP.

Because I read, transcribed, edited, and wrote about Lennon's diaries in my book Nowhere Man, I was one of the people they interviewed for the article.

They also spoke with my former writing partner and Lennon's personal assistant Fred Seaman, photographer Bob Gruen, and three musicians who played on Milk and Honey: guitarist Earl Slick, arranger Tony Devillo, and keyboard player George Small.

Written by Barry Nicolson, “The Final Voyage” is notable for its even-handedness. Nicolson takes pains to get beyond the myth of Lennon as a content, bread-baking househusband, and instead portrays him as a contradictory, deeply flawed, three-dimensional human being—which is probably why Ono refused to talk to him.

Nicolson balances my take on Lennon’s relationships with Ono, Paul McCartney, and May Pang, and his obsession with the occult, with Gruen’s attempts to perpetuate the myth, and Seaman’s efforts to characterize Lennon as a Republican and a supporter of Ronald Reagan. (The only thing Lennon said in his diaries about Reagan was that they’d shoot him and we’d get a CIA government. He was right on both counts... eventually.)

My only complaint about the piece is that the photo identified as “Robert Rosen” isn’t me, and I’d suggest that a correction is in order.

“The Final Voyage” is a rare example of rock journalism that neither places Lennon on a pedestal (like Ray Coleman) nor tears him down to size (like Albert Goldman). Click here to read the complete story.

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If Nowhere Man is destined to become a genuine classic, a book that readers will continue to talk about for decades to come, I can thank the Latin American media.

Since it was originally published, in English, in 2000, the press in countries like Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and Colombia (as well as Spain), have given Nowhere Man more serious, thoughtful coverage than any of the scandal-splattered stories that have occasionally roiled U.S. tabloids, like the New York Daily News, to name one.

The Latin American trend continues with two articles commemorating today’s anniversary of John Lennon’s murder that ran in the current issue of Proceso, which is, more or less, a progressive Spanish-language version of Newsweek in its heyday.

In the more than ten years since Random House Mondadori brought out a Spanish edition of Nowhere Man, this Mexico City-based journal of politics and culture has provided frequent, in-depth features about the book and its myriad literary and historical implications.

The two articles that ran in the December 8 issue are “Lennon, una biografía total” (Lennon, a full biography), by Roberto Ponce, and the provocatively titled “Sólo creo en una conspiración: la de Yoko Ono en mi contra” (I just believe in one conspiracy: Yoko Ono’s against me), which I wrote.

Ponce’s piece is about a massive Lennon bio, Bendito Lennon, by Octavio Cavalli, a Buenos Aires attorney who has obsessively researched every aspect of the ex-Beatle’s life. Prosa Amerian Editores is bringing out a revised edition next year, and it will feature new information about Lennon’s diaries, which I’ve been discussing with Cavalli.

The article analyzes Cavalli’s belief that Lennon was the victim of a conspiracy, that Mark David Chapman did not act alone, and that Dakota doorman José Perdomo, who was on duty the night of the murder, was a former CIA agent.

My piece is about “Salvador Astucia,” a pseudonymous Holocaust-denying conspiracy theorist who has accused me of being the CIA spymaster who ordered Lennon’s murder. As it turned out, Cavalli has uncovered what may be the only scrap of truth in “Astucia’s” insane online ravings: José Perdomo may very well be a former CIA agent.

The conspiracy in the headline is a reference to the unsuccessful efforts of Yoko Ono, former Playboy editor G. Barry Golson, and the New York district attorney to have me arrested unless I agreed never to tell the story of Lennon’s diaries. (Click here to see both articles.)

I cannot imagine the mainstream media in the U.S. ever publishing such a story, which I will soon post here, it its original English.

Hey hey, my my, conspiracy theories will never die.

Imagine if I were fluent in Spanish.

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Let's hang around on my new SoundCloud for a while. The first file I've uploaded is my reading from J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye at a Banned Books Week event in October 2012, at the 2A bar in the East Village. That's Eric Danville introducing me.

The other file is my complete Nowhere Man reading from this past October at a John Lennon event at 2A. That’s Eric Danville introducing me again. (A video of the first two parts of this reading is available here.)

Both files are downloadable.

In coming weeks, I’ll upload additional material from my archives—readings, interviews, and anything else that seems worth posting.

But for now, to commemorate the anniversary of Lennon’s murder on December 8, I give you The Catcher in the Rye and Nowhere Man. Read More 

More than 13 years after Nowhere Man was published in English, I continue to unearth major articles about the book that ran in the print editions of various newspapers in the early 21st century, and are just finding their way online. The latest one that's come to my attention was the cover story in the entertainment section of the June 22, 2001 issue of the irreverent Venezuelan daily Tal Cual (Just As It Is).

Hyped on page one as El lado oscuro de John Lennon (The Dark Side of John Lennon), and given the provocatively misleading cover line, La segunda muerte de John Lennon (The Second Death of John Lennon), in the entertainment section, the actual article was called Viaje al fondo del submarinista amarillo (Voyage to the bottom of the yellow submariner). It’s a semi-accurate summary of Nowhere Man, broken up by semi-sarcastic subheads like Sexo, no paz (Sex, no peace) and Nostradamus en ácido (Nostradamus on acid).

Meanwhile, as I await the impending publication of a revised edition of Bendido Lennon, by Octavio Cavalli, which will draw heavily from interviews Cavalli has conducted with me, and will be met by yet another surge of Latin American media attention, set to begin around the anniversary of Lennon’s murder, on December 8, I continue to grapple with an ongoing milagro that I became aware of three years before Nowhere Man was published in Spanish, in what may as well have been an alternate universe where people spoke a language I didn’t understand.

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My ongoing dialogue with Octavio Cavalli, author of Bendito Lennon, a comprehensive Spanish-language John Lennon biography, is unlike any interview I've ever done.

For one thing, our conversation began October 31 and may very well continue through February, when Cavilli comes to New York. For another, Cavalli, in Buenos Aires, records his questions and sends them to me as MP3s. I listen, make notes, and then record my own MP3s, which I send to him, sometimes twice a day.

Virtually every question Cavalli asks is about Lennon’s diaries, which I transcribed and edited in 1981, and which I discuss in detail in my own Lennon bio, published in Latin America and Spain as Nowhere Man: Los Últimos Días De John Lennon.

Cavalli’s book and our interview have come to the attention of Proceso, the Mexican newsweekly.

Ten years ago, Proceso ran a series of articles that helped put Nowhere Man on bestseller lists in multiple countries.

I think the revised edition of Bendito Lennon, which Prosa Amerian Editores is bringing out next year, is headed for bestseller lists, too. In the meantime, it’s breathing new life into Los Últimos Días.

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