Robert Rosen

If there's a better Beatles podcast than Something About the Beatles, I haven't found it. What makes SATB great is its host, Robert Rodriguez. His knowledge of the Fab Four is PhD level and his interviews often explore territory well beyond rock music. For example, in episode 286: Nowhere Man '24 with Robert Rosen, Rodriguez and I got into a discussion of MK-ULTRA, the CIA mind-control experiments. In in the 1950s and 60s, the agency used drugs like LSD and heroin, mostly on unwitting prisoners, in an attempt to create programmed assassins commonly known as "Manchurian Candidates."

This subject came up because conspiracy theorists believe that the man who assassinated John Lennon, Mark David Chapman, was either a Manchurian Candidate or a "Manchurian Patsy"—someone who took the fall for the murder when there was really a second gunman who shot Lennon.

I don't believe this and I said so on the podcast and in my book Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, in the extensive Chapman section and in a chapter titled "A Question of Conspiracy." Rodriguez, though, doesn't discount this possibility. Yet our conversation remained respectful, informative, and factual, both of us presenting our evidence as if in a courtroom, and letting listeners make up their own minds.

We also discussed my trip to Spain earlier this year, where Beatlemania lives. At La Tregua nightclub, in Sevilla, I presented the Spanish edition of Nowhere Man, and my wife, Mary Lyn Maiscott, joined Aida Vílchez, Martín León Soto, and the Nowhere Band, to perform Beatles and original songs for a packed and enthusiastic house. You can watch a video of the event here.

In addition, we touched on Lennon's friend and gardener Michael "Tree" Medeiros and his memoir, In Lennon's Garden, that Yoko Ono continues to repress; how information in May Pang's documentary, The Lost Weekend: A Love Story, meshes with information in Nowhere Man; and Lennon's fascination with "lucid" or programmed dreams.

This was my fourth appearance on SATB. I look forward to a fifth, and after you listen to episode 286 (and perhaps a few others), I hope you'll understand why I think SATB rocks.

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Aida Vílchez and Martín León Soto rehearse "If I Fell," by the Beatles, for their Nowhere Band show at La Tregua in Sevilla, Spain.

The Nowhere Man event I did in Sevilla,* in January, was the second reading and Q&A I've done in Spain. The first was in 2018, in Madrid. And what I witnessed both times was a passion for the Beatles that's different from anything I've seen in the United States in the last 50 years. There's an innocence and purity to it that I can't quite explain. You can feel it in Aida Vílchez and Martín León Soto's rehearsal of the Beatles' "If I Fell." And you can hear it in the crowd's response when they performed the song at La Tregua. ("If I Fell" begins at 01:30:50 in the video below.)

I originally thought this innocense and purity had to do with Francisco Franco, the (still dead) fascist generalissimo who led Spain from 1938 to 1973. He repressed foreign rock music though allowed the Beatles to perform there twice to show the world that Spain was a "normal" country. But once Franco was out of power and Spain became a democracy, British and American rock exploded there. So I was under the impression that the Spanish were making up for lost time with their passionate embrace of the Beatles. But that's not what happened with the people who invited me to Spain. Franco was their parents' generation. I now think it's more a case that they were born too late and they're trying to re-create and recapture the energy of this fantastic thing they missed. They do it by playing Beatles music live and listening to stories about them, especially from people who had a connection to it. Which is true in the US, too, but it's so much more commercialized here, which diminishes that feeling of purity and innocense.

The Spanish passion for the Beatles reminds me of the way I felt about the Brooklyn Dodgers, who left town when I was four. I was just old enough to understand who they were and what I'd missed. But there was no way to re-create the magic of 1955, the only time Brooklyn won the World Series.

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*Forgive me for saying Sevilla rather than Seville. But Seville no longer sounds right to my ear. Two weeks with Aida and Martín and I feel like a Sevillano.

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Before I arrived in Sevilla, Spain, for my presentation of Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon at La Tregua, I did a lot of rehearsing. My plan was to read in Spanish a brief introduction and then the opening paragraphs of the Siendo Rico chapter, enough to give people a sense of what the book is like. So I read both parts out loud over and over until the Spanish words started to feel comfortable coming out of my mouth.

The problem is I don't speak anything resembling fluent Spanish, and though I can make myself understood when necessary, I cannot understand what people are saying, especially when they talk fast. For the Q&A part of the presentation, I was going to need somebody to translate. Martín León Soto and Aida Vílchez made that possible. Martín and Aida had invited me and my wife, singer-songwriter Mary Lyn Maiscott, to come to Sevilla and stay at their house. They organized the event, arranged for publicity, and arranged for the Nowhere Band to join them and Mary Lyn in playing Beatles songs and original music for the second part of the show.

Aida was my language coach, Henry Higgins to my Eliza Doolittle—The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain until I got it. A typical session would go like this: "The word is reclusión, not seclusión... You do not pronounce the 'u' in seguir... It's él, not el." And so on. But she was a good teacher, and by the time I took to the stage at La Tregua, though nobody would ever think Spanish was my mother tongue, I felt confident that the audience would understand everything I said.

Martín and I had never worked together, but he proved to be an excellent translator for both the audience questions and my answers. I did my best to keep my answers short, and we'd discussed beforehand what to do if I went on too long. "Oh, just slap me across the face," I said. But violence was unnecessary. A comical hand signal drew a laugh from the audience and got me to shut up so he could translate. Click here to see a video of the Martín & Bobby Show. It begins at 6:55.

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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.

If you habla español, then you can understand my interview on El Flexo de Paco Reyero on Canal Sur radio in Sevilla, Spain. I talk about Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon. Since I don't speak fluent Spanish (or even close to it), the interview is done NPR style—I say a few words in English and it switches to the Spanish translation. The interview begins at 7:55 and runs for 17 minutes.

If you don't speak Spanish and want to learn about Nowhere Man, then please check out any of my other interviews. Most of them are in English. Or read the English edition of the book.

Many thanks to Martín León Soto (aka Maleso) for arranging the interview with Paco.

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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.

Antonio Cabral, a Sevilla-based photographer specializing in the culture and architecture of Spain, is best known for directing the photography for a 2016 National Geographic documentary about the restoration of the Fountain of the Lions in the Alhambra, in Granada. In recent years he's worked exclusively as a photographer, shooting mostly in black and white.

I met Antonio and his wife, Lorena, when they came to see my Nowhere Man presentation at La Tregua, in Sevilla. They asked if I'd be willing to pose for some photographs. After looking at the artful images on Antonio's website, I said yes and joined them one Saturday afternoon in Plaza de España, an enormous public square in Sevilla's Parque de María Luisa. You might recognize the square's colonnade from a scene in the Star Wars film Attack of the Clones. In the photo below, I'm reading Nowhere Man in the colonnade, and it's behind me in the color photo further down the page.

"I try to be objective," Antonio said, explaining that his concept of photography is to "see things as they are" but as a "sensitive human being" rather than a machine. He added, "I think that photography is the only language that can be understood throughout the world."

Taking photographs involves not only your eyes, but your sense of touch and smell, Antonio said. "Beauty is in everything, in the sublime and in the ordinary," and taking a great picture "has little to do with the things you see and a lot to do with how you look at them."

Antonio also offered some advice for aspiring photographers: "There are those who think that with a better camera they will be able to take better photos. A better camera won't do anything for you if there's nothing in your head or heart. One becomes a photographer when the camera becomes an extension of oneself. Then creativity with the five senses begins."

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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.

Why has Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon (Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon) endured for more than 24 years? Because people keep talking about it and writing about it.

The book has generated a miraculous amount of media coverage over the decades, in a variety of languages. The most recent example appeared in Diario de Sevilla the day before a Nowhere Man event last month at La Tregua café in that beautiful Spanish city. (Click here for the English translation.)

The article, "Nowhere Man, o todo lo que siempre quiso saber acerca de John Lennon" (Nowhere Man, or everything you ever wanted to know about John Lennon), by José Miguel Carrasco, is a retrospective of my career. But José also talks about how the presentation at La Tregua came about with a lot of help from Aida Vílchez and her "partner in life and art," Maleso (Martín León Soto), musicians in the Nowhere Band who performed Beatles and Lennon songs at the café along with my wife, Mary Lyn Maiscott, who sang some of her own songs, too.

Maleso must also be given a huge amount of credit for providing the translation during the Q&A portion of my presentation.

José's article certainly got word out about the show. The turnout at La Tregua was fantástico, the most people who've come to any event I've participated in since the Nowhere Man New York City launch party in 2000. And the crowd's enthusiasm for literature and music was electrifying. All I can say is, "We slayed in Sevilla!"

But enough talk about the show. If you want to see what it was like and get an idea of why Nowhere Man is the book that refuses to die, there's a video of the complete event. You can watch it here.

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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.

If you couldn't make it to La Tregua, in Sevilla, on January 28, here's a video of the complete show. Martín León Soto provides the translation for my Nowhere Man presentation. Bajo Cuerda, La Tregua's house band, covers a few Beatle tunes. And the Nowhere Band performs the Beatles, John Lennon, and Mary Lyn Maiscott originals. That's Mary Lyn on vocals and guitar; Martín on keyboard, guitar, and vocals; Aida Vílchez on guitar and vocals; Juan Carlos León on guitar, and Jorge Collado on percussion and vocals.

Here's the set list:

00:00:50 Grow Old With Me - Aida Vílchez & The Nowhere Band
00:04:05 Oh, My Love - Adelardo Mora
00:07:00 Presentación de Robert Rosen
00:11:12 Lectura
00:14:38 Questions from the audience
00:54:08 Nowhere Man - Bajo Cuerda
00:57:22 Things We Said Today - Bajo Cuerda
01:00:38 And I Love Her - Bajo Cuerda
01:03:43 I'm Losing You - Mary Lyn Maiscott & The Nowhere Band
01:08:43 Jezebel - Mary Lyn Maiscott & The Nowhere Band
01:13:12 Midnight in California - Mary Lyn Maiscott & The Nowhere Band
01:17:48 You Can't Do That - Mary Lyn Maiscott & The Nowhere Band
01:21:41 My Cousin Sings Harmony - Mary Lyn Maiscott & The Nowhere Band
01:26:20 Now And Then - Mary Lyn Maiscott & The Nowhere Band
01:30:50 If I Fell - The Nowhere Band
01:33:26 One After 909 - The Nowhere Band
01:36:08 (Just Like) Starting Over - The Nowhere Band

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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.

Hola a todos. Yo soy Robert Rosen. Escribí el libro Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon. Ahora estoy en Nueva York pero estaré en Sevilla el 28 de enero en café La Tregua. Voy a leer un poco del libro y responderé preguntas al respecto. Espero verte allí. Aquí un poco del capítulo uno.

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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 my last blog post before Mary Lyn Maiscott and I leave for Sevilla, Spain. There, on January 28 at 7 p.m. (19:00), at La Tregua café, I'll be reading en español from Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon and answering questions (in translation) about the book. Both the Spanish and English editions of Nowhere Man will be available.

My presentation will be followed by the Nowhere Band, featuring Mary Lyn and Sevilla locals Aida Vílchez and Martín León Soto, and backed by Bajo Cuerda, La Tregua's house band. They will perform Beatles and Lennon covers, original songs by Mary Lyn, and more. I hope you can join us for a memorable evening of literature and music.

You can read more about the event here, in la revista Yuzin.

If you're unfamiliar with Nowhere Man, here's a link to an interview I did recently with Adam Scull on WPRN Public Radio that does a nice job of summing up both the book and the story behind it.

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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 these first days of 2024, as I prepare to travel to Sevilla, Spain, to read from and answer questions about Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon, at La Tregua café on January 28, I've been thinking about what a miracle Nowhere Man has been. A book that publishers spent 18 years rejecting has now been in print 24 years in a variety of languages, and it's been a life-transforming odyssey. In 1981, when I began writing the book, I was an obscure freelancer. Suffice it to say that's no longer the case.

To celebrate my upcoming journey and the book's longevity, and to remind myself that what's happened is real, I've put together the above collection of ten print editions of Nowhere Man. This does not include another half-dozen print and ebook editions with identical covers. I invite you to join me in this celebration and, if possible, come to see me in Spain for a night of literature and music featuring the Nowhere Band: Mary Lyn Maiscott,  Aida Vílchez, and Martín León Soto.

Till then, happy New Year and ¡Feliz año nuevo!

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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.

Here's another reminder of the many talents of Aida Vílchez and Martín León Soto, who will be our hosts on January 28 when Mary Lyn Maiscott and I travel to Sevilla, Spain, and appear with Aida and Martín at La Tregua café for an evening of literature and music. I'll be reading from the Spanish edition of Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon and answering questions about the book. Mary Lyn will be singing Beatles covers, her own songs, and more with Aida and Martín, backed by La Tregua's house band.

In the above video, created with AI, CapCut, and a homemade green screen, Aida takes over for Diane Keaton in a scene with Woody Allen from Annie Hall, dubbed in Spanish. Who said you can't improve on a classic?

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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 just-launched Threads.

Aida Vílchez and Martín León Soto will be our hosts when Mary Lyn Maiscott and I travel to Sevilla, Spain, next month for a January 28 show at La Tregua café. I'll be reading from the Spanish edition of Nowhere Man and answering questions about the book. Mary Lyn will be singing Beatles covers, her own songs, and more with Aida and Martín, backed by La Tregua's house band.

As I learned recently, Aida's and Martín's talents go far beyond the musical. With a little help from AI, CapCut, and a homemade green screen, here's Aida, in the role of Yoko Ono, sitting in with John Lennon for a few bars of "Imagine." Stay with it till the end of this transcendent 42 seconds.

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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 just-launched Threads.

Save the Date: Sunday, January 28, 2024, at 19.00 (7 p.m.), at La Tregua café in Sevilla, Spain. I'll be reading en español from Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon and answering questions (in translation) about the book. I'll also be signing the latest Nowhere Man Spanish and English editions, which will be available at the café.

A performance by the Nowhere Band, featuring New York City's Mary Lyn Maiscott and Sevilla locals Aida Vílchez and Martín León Soto will follow. Backed by La Tregua's house band, the trio will perform Beatles and Lennon covers, original songs by Mary Lyn, and more. You can check out Mary Lyn's latest release, "My Cousin Sings Harmony," here.

Admission is gratis. For more information please call La Tregua at +34 687 94 02 36 or write them at latreguasevilla@gmail.com.

Stay tuned for more details.

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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 just-launched Threads.