I love you right back, John and Yoko

25 Years Ago Today...

Fans Mark Anniversary of Lennon's Murder
Updated 9:13 PM ET December 8, 2005

By PAT MILTON

NEW YORK (AP) - Some met John Lennon in person, others knew him from the television, still others never knew him at all. On Thursday, they gathered by the hundreds in Central Park's Strawberry Fields to remember the pacifist rock star murdered 25 years ago by a deranged Beatles fan.

Generations from across the world, if not quite the universe, united to celebrate Lennon's life and his message of peace _ playing his music, singing his songs, imagining what might have been if the ex-Beatle had survived the Dec. 8, 1980, shooting outside his Manhattan apartment building.

Yoko Ono was among those at Strawberry Fields, walking through a horde of hundreds of Lennon fans before stopping at a flower-covered mosaic paying tribute to Lennon with its one-word message: "IMAGINE."

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All we are saying is give peace a chance.

And so this is Xmas for black and for white, for yellow and red, let's stop all the fight.

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.

Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

They want to hold onto something they never had in the first place. Anybody who claims to have some interest in me as an individual artist or even as part of the Beatles has absolutely misunderstood everything I ever said if they can't see why I'm with Yoko. And if they can't see that, they don't see anything. They're just jacking off to - it could be anybody. Mick Jagger or somebody else. Let them go jack off to Mick Jagger, okay? I don't need it.

You are all geniuses, and you are all beautiful. You don't need anyone to tell you who you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace, think peace, live peace, and breathe peace, and you'll get it as soon as you like.

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that's making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

You make your own dream. That's the Beatles' story, isn't it? That's Yoko's story . That's what I'm saying now. Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It's quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself. That's what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be. There's nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can't wake you up. You can wake you up. I can't cure you. You can cure you.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

I'm really very embarrassed about my guitar playing, in one way, because it's very poor; I can never move, but I can make a guitar speak. I think there's a guy called Ritchie Valens, no, Richie Havens. Does he play very strange guitar? He's a black guy that was in a concert and sang ``Strawberry Fields'' or something. He plays, like, one chord all the time. He plays a pretty funky guitar. But he doesn't seem to be able to play in the real terms at all. I'm like that. Yoko has made me feel cocky about my guitar. You see, one part of me says, ``Yes, of course I can play,'' because I can make a rock move, you know? But the other part of me says, ``Well, I wish I could just do like B.B. King.'' If you would put me with B.B. King, I would feel real silly.

I don't want people taking things from me that aren't really me. They make you something that they want to make you, that isn't really you. They come and talk to find answers, but they're their answers, not us. We're not Beatles to each other, you know. It's a joke to us. If we're going out the door of the hotel, we say, 'Right! Beatle John! Beatle George now! Come on, let's go!' We don't put on a false front or anything. But we just know that leaving the door, we turn into Beatles because everybody looking at us sees the Beatles. We're not the Beatles at all. We're just us.

I'm not a cynic. They're getting my character out of some of things I write or say. They can't do that. I hate tags. I'm slightly cynical, but I'm not a cynic. One can be wry one day and cynical the next and ironic the next. I'm a cynic about most things that are taken for granted. I'm cynical about society, politics, newspapers, government. But I'm not cynical about life, love, goodness, death. That's why I really don't want to be labeled a cynic.

When we were away from it for a while it was like school holidays. You hadn't done any work for a bit and you just remembered the laughs. You looked forward to it again... until you got back and were fed up. But we've had enough performing now. I can't imagine a reason which would make us do any sort of tour ever again.

I was writing the song with the 'Daily Mail' propped up in front of me on the piano. I had it open to the 'News In Brief' or whatever they call it. There was a paragraph about four thousand holes being discovered in Blackburn Lancashire. And when we came to record the song there was still one word missing from that verse... I knew the line had to go, 'Now they know how many holes it takes to --something-- the Albert Hall.' For some reason I couldn't think of the verb. What did the holes do to the Albert Hall? It was Terry Doran who said 'fill' the Albert Hall. And that was it. Then we thought we wanted a growing noise to lead back into the first bit. We wanted to think of a good end and we had to decide what sort of backing and instruments would sound good. Like all our songs, they never become an entity until the very end. They are developed all the time as we go along.

I'm not afraid of death because I don't believe in it. It's just getting out of one car, and into another.

All you need is love.

If [Sean] doesn't see me a few days or if I'm really, really busy, and I just sort of get a glimpse of him, or if I'm feeling depressed without him even seeing me, he sort of picks up on it. And he starts getting that way. So I can no longer afford to have artistic depressions. If I start wallowing in a depression, he'll start coming down with stuff, so I'm sort of obligated to keep up. And sometimes I can't, because something will make me depressed and sure as hell he'll get a cold or trap his finger in a door or something, and so now I have sort of more reason to stay healthy or bright...

The Rolling Stone Interview with Jann Wenner

The 1975 Playboy Interview

The 1966 Look Magazine Interview

Some Links for You:

You see, The Mike Douglas Show was a truly entertaining afternoon distraction so I often found myself watching it. For those who will never get the chance to see it, I guess you could call it a combination of Oprah, Phil, and Larry King wedded with The Ed Sullivan Show (but plain and simple, not glitzy like Ed). Mike Douglas had an easygoing style and a great sense of humor. People enjoyed his company.

Two people who seemed to enjoy hanging out with Mike Douglas were John Lennon and Yoko Ono. John and Yoko shared one of their "little hobbies" with Mike: they were fond of picking a name at random from any metropolitan telephone book then calling that person to say, "Hello. This is John and Yoko and we love you."

It was fun to listen in as the entire live phone conversation would be hooked into the studio sound system. Sometimes people recognized their voices, sometimes not. Some thought it was fake, some believed. But it was always fun.

This was at the height of the Vietnam war and John and Yoko had taken out full page advertisements in several major metro newspapers. The ads went something like this:

WAR

IS

OVER.

If you want it.

Anyway, I sometimes wondered if anyone had ever thought to call up John and Yoko to say, "Hello, this is me and I love you." So this post is to say to John and Yoko, "I love you, too."