Laurie Kaye on John Lennon’s Last Interview

Laurie Kaye reflects on her life story told in her memoir, Confessions of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Namedropper. Laurie’s career highlights include conversations with David Bowie, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, whose final interview she conducted on the fateful day of 8 December 1980.

Your love for The Beatles began in your youth. How did it feel to transition from being a fan to interviewing three?

I started out as a Beatles fan when I first heard them on Los Angeles AM radio stations as a little kid, thanks to the transistor radio with earplugs that my grandparents gave me, which I kept with me all day and all night, listening to and loving the band right off the bat! And then getting to see the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show a couple years later was also super exciting, and being taken to a local movie theater to see A Hard Day’s Night was too! Then being invited by a friend’s mother while I was still in elementary school to see the Beatles live at Dodger Stadium in August 1966 was beyond amazing! So I continued to dig the Fab Four for years, even after they sadly broke up – their solo work was still super cool! And when I was hired by RKO Radio to write and co-produce what would become the lengthiest Beatles radio special ever created in the U.S. (RKO Present the Beatles – 14 hours long!), I was thrilled – especially a year or so later when the show got syndicated to be played on radio stations around the world, and we not only expanded it to 17 hours but we were also able to change the title to the original one I’d come up with – The Beatles from Liverpool to Legend!

The show became super popular, no doubt because I was able to include new George Harrison interview bites I’d recently gotten, since I had a solo talk with him for another RKO rock-radio special I’d been hired to write – The Top 100 of the 70’s! I was thrilled to talk to George, and then just over 6 months later, in June 1979, to be sent to London with my RKO Radio team to meet up with and interview Paul and Linda McCartney and their latest line-up of Wings right after the release of Back to the Egg! My interview with the Beatles talented producer George Martin took place in January 1980, shortly after his great book came out – All You Need is Ears – and then later that same year, our RKO Radio team interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono got scheduled for December 8th, which I found practically unbelievable considering John had no doubt always been my biggest Beatles idol! So going from being a Beatles fan to an interviewer of 3 out of 4 band members was one of the most memorable and amazing parts of my entire life and career!

You mentioned that John brought up The Beatles himself during the interview, even though you were advised to focus on his present. How did this contrast with your discussions with Paul and George?

We were told by the record company to not ask John anything about the Beatles, or bring up his past at all, but happy to say John himself was the one who mentioned and described his meet-ups years before with both Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono! Neither George nor Paul in our interviews talked much about their days with the Beatles either, except to say, along with John, that they’d been kept extremely busy recording and touring with the band almost all the time, so as John himself said, he’d had no previous ability or time to be a care-taking father for his first son, Julian, like he was now able to do now with second son, Sean!

John praised Yoko Ono’s talents as an artist, comparing her to Paul McCartney. Given your interactions with Yoko, what do you think John saw in her artistry that was so compelling?

John let us know he was thrilled to have Yoko’s amazing conceptual art influence him as it did right from the start, and Yoko herself told us that she was super excited to have John help her go from being an “Avant Gard Art Snob” to being into “Pop Media!” And as far as being able to write, record and perform music with Yoko following his lengthy experience with Paul, John was excited and told us he wanted to continue his studio and stage time with the talented woman whose ability he felt was so amazing! He also gave us his original impression of what he referred to as her cool vocals when he first heard them by imitating her during our interview!

John was very complimentary of your questions. Which question or answer from that day stands out most vividly?

John was no doubt the most complimentary, validating rockstar I ever interviewed when it came to both my questions and comments and his reactions to them! After he’d been talking for quite a while about all the time he’d been able to spend with his son Sean over the past 5 years as a non-recording househusband, I broke in and said, “I want to ask you about getting the urge to make music again”, and John answered excitedly with a super loud, funny and affectionate reply – “OH, it came over me all of a sudden, LOVE! I didn’t know what came over me!” As everyone on our RKO team plus Yoko began to laugh, I jumped in saying “I know, like you were possessed!” John responded hysterically again, saying “I was possessed by this Rock and Roll Devil, you know!” Our laughter continued as John and Yoko went on to discuss their work and the love that went into creating Double Fantasy, and John broke in saying to me “Just suddenly I had like – if you’ll parden the expression – DIARRHEA of creativity!” WOW – I totally loved having John be so hysterically responsive about everything I said to him!

Your interview with John is now a historic document. Have you noticed any new nuances or details over the passage of time?

Every time I go back and listen to both our entire interview and/or the RKO Radio show I wrote featuring a lot of it following his death (John Lennon: The Man, The Memory), I get super excited remembering how fascinating all of John Lennon’s responses still are to me and everyone else after all these years! I especially dig hearing his descriptive story about his original meet up with Yoko Ono at London’s Indica art gallery, which led to their first date at his house nearly 2 years later! That date of course prompted and enabled them to spend all night recording their first album together, Two Virgins, which was released in late 1968! Plus it gave them the opportunity to make love for the very first time the next morning as the sun came up – so cool to have John provide awesome details about his original get-together with Yoko!

How did it feel to switch from interviewer to interviewee when media outlets reached out to you in the days following his death?

Being asked questions instead of asking them myself was most definitely an unusual experience for me, and it started right off the bat – as described in my book, mere moments after I’d found out that John Lennon had been shot and I saw Yoko sobbing hysterically in the hospital and realized he’d probably actually been killed, I was asked to get to RKO Radio Network New York headquarters as soon as I could, so I could immediately be interviewed by stations and newspapers all over the country, and around the world as well! And then the worst of it all came the next morning, when RKO sent me over to NBC as requested by the Today Show, which was so very hard for me to be on TV after staying up all night, feeling extremely guilty and crying hysterically!

You’ve interviewed many stars of music and film, from David Bowie to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Does your preparation and approach change depending on the subject?

My prep and approach prior to any interview I’ve conducted – whether it’s with a rockstar, actor, author, politician, etc – of course changes depending on the subjects I need to bring up, which are based on the purpose of the interview in the first place. If it’s for an eagerly anticipated rock radio special I’m about to write and no doubt co-produce, then I’m incredibly excited, especially since I’m for sure a huge fan of whoever I’m about to meet up with and talk to! If it’s an interview for a newscast, that’s something else – I need to make sure the interviewee will truthfully respond to whatever I ask, and explain what it is our listeners are concerned about and need to know!

Your memoir’s title references ‘name-dropping’ playfully. How do you ensure that your stories highlight the humanity behind the names rather than just the star power?

Yes, as the contents of my book indicates, I’m definitely a Rock ‘n’ Roll Name-Dropper – I love having had the ability and experience that enables me to this day to describe, quote, and mention the names of so many of my favorite rockstars! The compassion and care I have, especially for those musicians I’ve interviewed who’ve sadly, tragically, passed away in the years since I spoke with them – or in John Lennon’s sad case, the hours since I did – is obviously hurtful, so telling the most stories I can about my experience with each and every one of them makes everything so very personal, and helps me feel like I’m letting readers know how important they’ve all been to me, still are, and always will be!

Your memoir captures your personal journey through the world of rock ‘n’ roll. How has writing it helped you reflect on your life and career?

Even before John was shot and killed mere hours after our interview ended, I’d always wanted to write a book about my life which like John’s, has included plenty of Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, plus my incredible get-together him and other Fab Four members! When John begged me to please let him autograph my copy of Yoko’s great book Grapefruit which I’d brought with me to the Dakota, I was excited and told him of course he could sign it with Yoko since he’d written the introduction! He was thrilled, and when I told him how grateful I was, he made a point of telling me how much he himself loved it when authors signed their books for him! So I of course told him that when I wrote mine, I’d definitely send him an autographed copy, and he smiled at me like crazy and said “GREAT!”, which made me feel even MORE than GREAT! So even though it took me practically 40 years after his death to begin writing my book, I still kept thinking as I was working on it what John Lennon’s reaction would be, and to this day I’m absolutely sure that considering our fairly common family upbringings and places we’ve enjoyed spending so much time at, like Bali, he would totally enjoy reading the story of my life and career! So yes, that of course helps me look back on everything I’ve experienced with so much reflective pleasure!

Further information

Further information on Confessions of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Name-Dropper: My Life Leading Up to John Lennon’s Last Interview is available at confessionsofarocknrollnamedropper.com

All photographs from Laurie Kaye