Bermuda Royal Gazette article on John in 1980
UsurperTom
Last modified: December 07. 2005 11:35AM
The night I met John Lennon
By Scott Neil
Beatle John Lennon came to Bermuda in 1980 for what subsequently turned
out to be his last summer holiday.
Having spent his initial days in Bermuda at the rented cottage in
Knapton Hill, Lennon decided he needed another home on the Island that
was not as public and would allow him more space and freedom.
The crew of the Megan Jaye, the three Coneys, stayed at the Knapton
Hill property.
Lennon and his son Sean and assistant Fred Seaman, who had by now
arrived on the Island, were to move to a new rented house in
Fairylands, Pembroke, near Hamilton.
Because it was June there was virtually nothing available in the rental
market, but estate agent Bill Lusher had made enquires and felt sure
he'd come up with a suitable property and location.
The occupants of the house at the end of Fairylands Drive, known as
Undercliff, were Rolf and Molly Luthi. When Rolf heard that the former
Beatle was seeking to borrow his home for a month or so he had initial
reservations.
"He came to Bermuda. He did not like the house he was in so we were
asked if we would be willing to accommodate him," said Rolf.
The plan was the Luthis would temporarily live in a cottage on South
Shore while Lennon moved in at Undercliff.
The Fairylands house was old fashioned, part of the building dated back
to 1700. The yellow stucco villa with green shutters was tucked away
and accessed by a flight of stone steps.
"I asked to meet him before he came to the house to tell him it was
not a fancy house," explained
Rolf. "I met him at Knapton Hill. He sat down with me and I told him
about the house and he said that it was too public at Knapton Hill."
Having met Lennon, Rolf now felt more relaxed about giving up his home
to the musical legend.
"I'd expected a different person. He was a nice guy and I had no
doubts about him using the house."
There was one problem though. Lennon was keen to move into Undercliff
as soon as possible, but with the Queen's Birthday holiday weekend
imminent the Luthis were having trouble finding cleaners to prepare the
house for the new arrival.
So they opted to do as much of the cleaning themselves as possible, and
before they had a chance to finish Lennon arrived.
"He waltzed in, saw the grand piano and started playing it,"
remembers Rolf. "We had a young cleaner doing the windows and he saw
the man at the piano and said 'I think that's John Lennon', but I
did not tell him it was because it had to be secret."
Lennon's wife Yoko Ono paid a brief visit to the Island during
Lennon's extended holiday.
Lennon and personal assistant Fred went to pick her up at the airport
but, according to one account, "tarried too long at the Swizzle Inn
and missed her at the airport".
Having been informed that Disco 40 was regarded as one of the
Island's 'hot spots' Lennon soon found his way to the Front
Street venue.
The disco and bar no longer exist although the building, known as
Magnolia House, is now a combination of offices and a gym and is
located a few doors away from the Docksiders pub.
It appears Lennon made at least two visits to the disco. Lynne Matcham
was in Disco 40 with her sister Theresa. It was a "slow night".
"I'd popped in for a few drinks with friends and saw this slim guy
walk in all in white. He was wearing a baseball hat and had a pony tail
and he was with this other guy," said Lynne.
She recognised the ex-Beatle and told her dancing friends, but they
were initially disbelieving that such a famous name had simply walked
in without fanfare.
Lynne was working at that time in the Smiths retail shop and had seen
Yoko at the store, so figured Lennon must be on the Island too.
Too breathless with expectation to do it herself, Lynne asked one of
the guys she was with to approach the man in white and find out if it
was Lennon.
"He confirmed he was and our friend invited him to sit with us. He
talked with us for half an hour, bought us drinks and said how much he
loved Bermuda and how he and Yoko could walk about and not have their
clothes pulled apart," said Lynne.
"He could not say enough about how good Bermuda was. He was so thin
and dressed in the image of total white. I had imaged him to be much
larger in real life. I'd been a Beatles' fan since I was 13 and
John was had always been my favourite."
Meeting her idol, Lynne said: "When you get to talk one-on-one with
someone so famous you do not think as quickly as normal.
"But he was just so gentle and softly spoken, there was none of the
rock star glam bit. He was down to earth, smiled and laughed and said
how Bermuda was his inspiration and how beautiful the Island was."
It was on another evening at Disco 40 that Lennon famously encountered
two off-duty journalists in what is believed to have been the catalyst
for one of his most famous final songs Watching The Wheels.
Gerry Hunt, at the time a reporter on The Royal Gazette, and journalist
colleague Mark Graham from sister paper the Mid Ocean News, were out on
the town. "A friend had told me Lennon was on the island. I was nuts
on The Beatles, had been ever since I was a kid. I can remember when I
was about nine or ten, it was 1963 or '64, and my dad saying as my
family had breakfast 'The Beatles? Another three or four years and
you'll not remember who they were'," recalls Gerry.
"You get into journalism and you meet a lot of stars, and eventually
it's not that big a deal meeting somebody who is a big name. But
there are a few, a very few, that you would really like to meet. For me
it was The Beatles, any one of them. I just wanted to shake one of them
by the hand and say thanks for all the pleasure they had brought.
"If I'd had a choice it would have been, in order, Paul, George,
Ringo, and then John," Gerry says. "I'd always just assumed that
if you met Lennon he'd turn out to be a snarling, swearing, obnoxious
character who would treat you, a lifelong fan and starry-eyed
hero-worshipper, as a piece of dirt.
"A man who'd hit the big time - as big as it gets - but having
got there regarded with utter contempt the people who had put him
there. I figured the other three were a lot more likely to be pleasant
if you ever came across them. I couldn't have been more wrong. It was
in late June 1980. I'd finished work late at night at The Royal
Gazette and gone for a few drinks with friends at the Lobster Pot, just
up the road from the office.
"We moved on to Disco 40. It was a quiet night, nothing special. Two
of my close friends, Mark and Brian Stevenson, a psychiatric nurse at
St Brendan's, were with me but had left me at the downstairs bar as
they wandered off.
"Another good friend collared me at the bar and, knowing how much I
was into The Beatles, asked did I realise that Mark and Brian were
speaking to John Lennon out in the hallway.
"I didn't believe her at first. A mutual friend on the Island had
told me in confidence a few weeks earlier she was organising a place
for Lennon to stay, so I knew he was there, but hardly imagined him
hanging around in the lobby at Disco 40.
"But my friend was insistent, so eventually I wandered out from the
bar. By the cigarette machine I saw Mark and Brian talking to a fairly
small, slightly-built guy, with his hair scraped back harshly in a pony
tail, a pointed nose and almost "piggy-like" eyes behind
pink-rimmed specs.
"Mark, one of the biggest Lennon fans I ever knew, said in awe
'Gerry, this is John Lennon'.
"I was convinced the lads had had too much to drink and were being
conned. 'Get out, he's not Lennon', I told them. 'That's
right, I'm actually 'Arry 'Arbottle', said the pony-tailed guy.
"But he said it in the most distinctive, Liverpool accent. And I
realised this was indeed John Lennon," said Gerry. "The next few
minutes passed in a blur. There was a lot of trivial chat about the
cigarette machine not having the brand he wanted; about whether he was
having a good time; about the weather, for God's sake!
"Then we asked if he fancied going upstairs for a drink. He was with
his personal assistant, a guy called Fred, and the two of them
discussed whether he should or not.
"John was worried he would get in trouble with 'Mother' - the
name he used for Yoko - if he got back late. But eventually he said,
'Yeah, let's go and have a few'. We could not believe it.
"There we were, upstairs in Disco 40, having a drink with John
Lennon. This was the man who had not made a record for five years, and
had not given an interview for longer than that.
"Mark and I felt we couldn't miss the opportunity, and explained
who we were, small-time journalists who had the chance of one of the
biggest exclusives around.
"His response was amazing. No, he wouldn't give an interview,
because he didn't think he had anything to say (What!). But, he
didn't want us to think he had any grudge against journalists.
"He said 'Without you lot, The Beatles would still have been stuck
playing in small clubs in Liverpool'. We came to an arrangement that
if we agreed just to write a short piece about him being on the Island,
he would willingly chat for a while.
"And he did, for nearly two hours, with his man Fred being sent to
the bar regularly to top up the drinks. He seemed to be completely
relaxed, talking without any prompting about growing up in Liverpool,
success with The Beatles, the life he loved in New York, and the love
for his son, Sean.
"One of the most memorable things about the night was how Mark kept
laying into Lennon about how a man of his talents should not be
shutting himself away in a New York apartment, but should be writing
great songs.
"I was a fan of The Beatles, but Mark was a fan of Lennon, and felt
cheated his hero was not producing. He seemed determined to make John
feel he was wasting away.
"And he kept on at him about how he must surely regret he was no
longer part of the big time. How could he possibly be happy when he was
no longer involved?
"While Mark was ranting, a number of images were being projected on
to a wall of the club. It was a series of wheels, constantly turning.
"Check out the lyrics to Lennon's 'Watching the Wheels' on his
album Double Fantasy. I KNOW I was there when Lennon got the idea for
that song."
An attempt was made to entice Lennon to play a jam session with Brian
and two other musician friends, but Lennon and his assistant had to go.
"And so they headed off into the night. Seaman actually recalls the
evening in the book he wrote after Lennon's death.
"He doesn't mention us, but he does say how John had been
disappointed the good-looking young women he spoke to had not been
interested in him - he was too old and none of them recognised
him!"
Tony Brannon and his father ran Disco 40 and Tony remembers the night
Lennon visited the venue and stood in the upstairs disco at the bar.
Although a big Beatles fan, he was not sure that the customer was
indeed one of the most famous musicians in the world.
"I didn't know that he was on the Island, I don't think many
people did, it never really got into the newspapers," said Tony.
"John and Fred (Seaman) came to Disco 40 and I must have walked past
him four or five times and thought 'That guy looks like John Lennon,
but he can't be'.
"It wasn't a very busy night, I'm sure it was mid-week. He was in
the upstairs at the new disco at the bar up towards the back of the
club. I walked past him.
"I was in the lounge/VIP area, which has a grand piano and afterwards
when I realised it was Lennon I was kicking myself thinking we could
have invited him into the lounge."
Tony recalls seeing Lennon talking to the local journalists.
In interviews later that year, Lennon mentioned hearing the B52s'
Rock Lobster track at the disco and was struck by how much it reminded
him of Yoko's recordings and felt it was time he and Yoko got back
into the recording studio.
Tony thinks the well-intentioned barracking Lennon received from Gerry
and Mark also had something to do with it.
He said: "They gave him a hard time, not in a nasty way, but asking
him when he was going to get off his arse and start writing songs
again.
"As a result of the stick he got at the bar that evening he started
writing again, playing his guitar outside Rolf's house in
Fairylands."
It was only as Lennon left the disco that Tony realised who he was.
He said: "I followed him down the stairs. He was wearing a black suit
and had a black hat and looked very serene. He was very petite and thin
but was very Zen-like. He nodded his head and got into a taxi."
Although Tony did not meet Lennon, he became friends with the star's
assistant Fred who paid a later visit to Disco 40 and was entertained
in the VIP lounge.
He re-paid the compliment with a copy of Lennon's new record when it
was released that November and a witty note that it should be played at
the disco, warning 'you better not f*** around and play it only in
the lounge'.
Tony has kept these treasured items.
Meanwhile it was July 1980. Lennon still had the best part of a month
to enjoy in Bermuda.
terra
:)
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