On Sunday, July 20, 2003 at 7:52:50 PM UTC-4, I WUV YA DUBYA wrote:
> I got a nice response from the rare 1965 interview with John and Paul I
> posted yesterday, so I decided to continue my policy of "sharing the wealth"
> from my vast collection of Beatles-related print material.
> Today, I am posting an article from a "Monkee Spectacular" magazine from
> late 1967. It was written by Phyllis Nesmith, the first wife of Mike
> Nesmith of the Monkees. When the Nesmiths went to England In February 1967,
> the Lennons invited them to stay at their home. Their visit coincided with
> the making of Sgt. Pepper. But before arriving at John's house, the
> Nesmiths attended the infamous "A Day In The Life" orchestral recording
> session. Phyllis describes the scene at the session and later at the
> Lennons' house.
> The article is a sort of time capsule that reveals more about the state of
> Phyllis Nesmith's and Cynthia Lennon's respective marriages at that moment
> in time than it does about their famous husbands.
> I have literally dozens of Beatles-related "first-hand" reports like this
> from that long-ago era. If there's any interest here, I will post more.
> Some are buried in musty fan magazines, others in old copies of mainstream
> publications like Cosmopolitan and Redbook. All were written with a sense
> of innocence that has long since been replaced by cynicism and pandering
> sensationalism. The mid to late '60's was a state of mind that can never
> ever happen again. Only those of us who are old enough to actually remember
> the mood and mindset of that time will even understand what I'm talking
> about.
>
> A Weekend With John & Cynthia Lennon (told exclusively to "Monkee
> Spectacular" by Phyllis Nesmith)
> When Mike and I left for our first vacation in England I had some wild ideas
> about what I wanted to see and do, but I never dreamed we would spend an
> entire weekend with John and Cynthia Lennon! When we first arrived in
> London, we wanted to call John Lennon, even though we'd never met him. We
> wanted very much to take them to dinner so we sent him a telegram.
> John never responded to our telegram, but the next night we received an
> invitation to a Beatles' recording session at EMI studios. John met us there
> and told us he got our telegram and thought it was great. He knew it would
> be hard to get together, so he waited to invite us to the session. At the
> end of the session John and Cyn invited us to spend the weekend with them!
> The session itself was the wildest thing I've seen in my whole life. First
> of all, it was a very private thing -- everyone was there by invitation
> only. The Stones were there, Marianne Faithful, and Patti Harrison, among
> many others. The only Beatle wife who wasn't there was Maureen Starkey
> because she wasn't feeling well.
> I was so nervous! It seemed like such a freaky scene because I didn't know
> what was going on. The four Beatles were so cordial, I can't begin to tell
> you! We walked in and sat by the door on two little chairs and Paul came
> over and said "Hello, how are you, its good to see you." We had met Paul at
> a night club the night before. When we first came in, everyone else was
> seated at one end of the studio and they were laughing and talking and the
> orchestra was tuning up. And you should have seen the orchestra! They wore
> white ties and tails and they all had false noses and weird glasses!
> Paul was doing most of the work with the orchestra, so George Harrison came
> over to us and he was so outgoing and nice. Finally John came over and
> thanked us for the telegram and said, "Come on down and meet Cyn" and he
> made us feel so at ease. We all went down and John introduced me to Cynthia
> and I sat down and said, "I'm so nervous." She said, "Hold on, this isn't
> really my scene, you know, I'm nervous too." She said that John had told her
> to put on something wild, so she wore these wild purple pajama pants that
> seemed way too tight on her. Everyone else was also dressed really freaky.
> When we sat down, the idea of the session was to record everyone talking and
> laughing. All the girls except Cynthia and I were walking around the
> orchestra with burning sparklers! Cynthia and I talked and we found that
> our reactions to our husbands and their fame were so much alike we really
> hit it off. We agreed that it was important to our family and our husbands
> to maintain a sense of proportion throughout the whole thing. It wasn't so
> much expressed in words, I knew she felt the same way. We said that it was
> hard to be married to a person who was affected by so many outside things.
> You really have to be on your toes and you have to really love him in order
> for that not to make any difference.
> You have to be able to sort out the hang-ups that come from the outside and
> affect your husband -- what really pertains to your own relationship and
> really keep a sense of proportion about that, then you're going to have a
> groovy relationship no matter what it looks like to the outside world. I
> think John acts toward Cyn very much like Mike acts towards me -- he sort of
> keeps her in good humor. She has a tendency, like I do, to be overly
> sensitive to harsh remarks. Sometimes John teases her and she starts to
> take offense and then he says, "Oh, Cyn, don't do that." Then she can laugh
> and she knows it doesn't have anything to do with her.
> Cynthia is very thoughtful and very quiet. She's very sensitive because she
> had an awful lot to go through. I never travel on tour with Mike, so I
> don't go through the airport scenes. I don't go to any press interviews or
> anything like that. And I don't feel left out because I understand that
> when Mike is going through all of that, it's very hard on him. There is a
> lot of loneliness and inactivity being on tour -- sitting in a hotel room,
> getting all excited about the performance, being let down when it's over.
> You go through changes and I know if I were with Mike for more than two or
> three days on tour there would be tension between us.
> John was telling us that Cynthia never goes with him because he treats her
> so shabbily, and he feels bad about taking it out on her. I'm sure that
> Cynthia loves her husband and I don't think she's unhappy at all. I think
> living with John Lennon forces her to change, to expand her life and
> outlook. People are like weathervanes -- they change directions with the
> wind. She may wish for peaceful moments and they may not come to her too
> often, but that's not really "unhappiness" -- it's more like acceptance of
> her lot.
> She thinks she is as vital to John as his right arm and I'm sure she
> believes that. I haven't always been perfectly content myself. I don't
> know if I'll ever be able to say that I'm fulfilled because that feels like
> such a nothing state of being to me. There is something more than that
> sense of accomplishment, it's progress and growing, never standing still.
> Sometimes you think you feel unhappiness, but it isn't -- it's learning and
> compromising.
> The Lennons live in a big old brick house with lots of high ceilings and
> staircases that wind up three floors. Mike and I sort of wandered through
> the house during our weekend there. I remember the dining room -- there's a
> huge banquet table and the walls are covered in purple velvet! It's very
> rich and very comfortable; it's great. John has a lot of freaky psychedelic
> art and a lot of little knick-knacks that are hard to describe. There was
> so much stuff all over the place. In the breakfast room, John has wildly
> colored shelves. He's on a kick of wildly colored things, so he had a
> friend paint a piano with flowers and designs and every key on the keyboard
> is a different color! It goes through all the shades from light to the
> darkest. The wildest thing of all is his Rolls Royce car. It's yellow with
> all the flowers on the side. It really blew our minds; it's beautiful.
> The Rolls is really fantastic. It has a built-in record player, though I
> can't imagine how you could play it when the car is moving over bumps. It
> also has a TV, a tape recorder, and a telephone. We didn't go many places
> in the car, except Cyn took me to Maureen Starkey's house. I never did meet
> Ringo's little boy -- he was out for a walk. But we had tea with Maureen
> and talked endlessly. We enjoyed that. Julian Lennon is a very withdrawn
> and seemingly lonely child. He may be going through one of those stages
> where he's very shy, but he refused to speak to us. A record was on and he
> was dancing. He amuses himself nicely. He's very quiet.
> The whole weekend was so relaxing. Cyn and I cooked a big Sunday dinner.
> She made a roast and some great potatoes. The potatoes are really the best
> thing about English cooking. I watched how she made them so I could learn
> how. She peeled them, cut them into chunks, boiled them for awhile, then
> about 20 minutes before the roast was done she put them with the roast in
> the juices. The outside of the potatoes were all brown and crispy and the
> inside was almost as soft as mashed potatoes. They were the best potatoes
> I've ever put in my mouth though I expect I'm a bit fatter because of them.
> John showed us some movies the first night we were there. They were really
> weird films -- like art films. Then we talked for awhile and went to bed.
> The next day we just sat around the whole day and had tea and talked. John
> played the unfinished and unmixed tracks to "Sgt. Pepper" (it wasn't out yet
> then) and that was so exciting to us. Their music seems worlds away from
> what Mike and the others are recording.
> I'll never forget the weekend, it was great just to relax and get to know
> such wonderful people. They mentioned to us they loved fresh grapefruit, but
> couldn't get it in London. When we got home I went to the Farmers' Market
> and had a whole crate sent to them. Although I never heard back from them,
> I hope they liked it.