A new documentary catches the world's most famous dropouts at work and play and provides new revelations about The Beatles afterlife of John Lennon. It also does a very good job of rehabilitating the unfairly maligned Yoko Ono
What, you may ask, is there left to say about the most celebrated and vilified rock `n’ roll couple in history? Well, as acclaimed documentarian Kevin Macdonald proves in his new film about John Lennon and Yoko Ono, rather a lot.
Oscar-winning Macdonald is the director of excellent documentaries such as Whitney, Touching the Void and One Day in September and in One To One, he turns his insightful eye on the eighteen months that John and Yoko spent living in a poky apartment in Greenwich Village between 1971 and 1972.
The Beatles had finally and agonisingly imploded and Lennon remained outwardly serene but searching for a new cause. One night while flicking through the mindboggling array of channels on his television, TV addict Lennon came across a Geraldo Rivera exposé of the criminal neglect at Willowbrook State School for children with intellectual disabilities in Staten Island.
Lennon, a man who lampooned disabled people only a few years earlier, decided to stage a concert in aid of the beleaguered kids and so turn his post-Fab Four disillusionment into direct political action.
What is most striking is Lennon's endearing mix of naivety and self-righteousness - was he a dedicated peacenik or a monied dilettante playing at being social activist? More importantly, should we ever forgive him for Imagine, inarguably the worst song recorded by anyone ever?
So, the One To One benefit for Willowbrook takes place at Madison Square Garden in August, 1972 and it was to be Lennon’s only full-length live show after leaving The Beatles. Previously only available as a grainy VHS bootlegs, the John Lennon Estate has given Macdonald footage of the evening and it is reborn here as a seriously great sounding gig, including a scalp-prickling version of Mother, and stonkingly great takes on Instant Karma and Come Together.
The concert is the jumping off point for Macdonald's film but One To One is so much more than that. Even before he moved uptown to the Dakota Building and became a house husband, baking bread and looking after his and Yoko’s son Sean, Lennon spent his days watching television. Lots of television and his viewing habits provide a handy framing device for Macdonald, who has punk chronicler Julien Temple’s magpie eye for surreal and enlightening archive footage.
We are treated to channel surfing as kaleidoscopic social history, taking in the Vietnam War, TV game shows, Nixon, Coca-Cola ads, Walter Cronkite, The Waltons and the uprising at Attica state prison. It all charges along at a frenetic pace that really captures the chaos of the early seventies; the hippy dream is disappearing in a cloud of napalm and bad vibes in the years leading up to Watergate. It's all the more depressing to look back on now as America descends into cartoon autocracy.
There are walk-on parts for a numerous street misfits and high office crooks, from socialist activist Jerry Rubin and poet Allen Ginsberg and to Richard Nixon and odious Republican governor George Wallace.
Macdonald’s film was made with the blessing of Sean and Yoko and as well as creating a meticulous reproduction of the couple’s Greenwich Village bolthole, he has hit a rich seam of never-before-seen material, including home movies and numerous phone recordings.
These taped calls are the film’s big selling point. John and Yoko decided to keep a recorded archive of their telephone conversations because, not unreasonably, they suspected that the deeply paranoid Nixon administration was spying on them.
So, over fifty years later, we get to eavesdrop on conversations the couple had with quite a cast of callers, including AJ Weberman, a holier than thou bore who rooted through Bob Dylan’s garbage to prove he was a capitalist sell-out and who later condemned the singer for having the audacity to become a millionaire. These phone recordings also provide a very funny running gag about Ono struggling to find 500 live flies for one of her art installations, with various flunkies ringing her with details of prices and life spans.
Macdonald’s film also does a very good job of rehabilitating Yoko, possibly the most despised woman in rock music (apparently, she broke up The Beatles). Ono, a kind of dragon Lady Macbeth, according to a certain breed of music bore, was subjected to industrial levels of misogynism. As she herself remarks in One To One, "I was considered a bitch in this society but since I met John, I was upgraded into a witch" (and there is plenty of home movie footage of John and Yoko visiting Salem, the site of the original witch trails in colonial America).
What is most striking is Lennon’s endearing mix of naivety and self-righteousness - was he a dedicated peacenik or a monied dilettante playing at being social activist? More importantly, should we ever forgive him for Imagine, inarguably the worst song recorded by anyone ever? Either way, this is very good document of an era you may think you’ve already know all about.
Director Sam Mendes is currently plotting his four-part Beatles biopic and Macdonald’s film only covers two very eventful years of Lennon’s Beatles afterlife. There could and should be at least another two instalments to come, leading up to that December night in 1980 outside the Dakota Building.
