|
The Music Rock Notes Area
collectors buy Lennon/Ono tapes By Steve Morse Globe Staff John Lennon, sweetly grooming the hair of his wife, Yoko Ono. John smoking pot. John rehearsing "Instant Karma" and writing "Mind Games." The Lennons meeting with a Black Power advocate and later, in a moment of comic relief, giving a madcap guided tour of London, with John pointing to Buckingham Palace and using a street expression to describe what the king and queen to there to make "little princes and princesses."
Some of its provocative, some of it romantic, but
all of it is John and Yoko at the core, during four days of filming in
February of 1970 by Yoko's former husband, Tony Cox. Now dubbed
"The Lost Lennon Tapes Discovered"," they have come to
light after being purchased from Cox by a group of Boston-area Beatles
collectors, including Ray F. Thomas (a rock veteran who used to be the
production manager at the Psychedelic Supermarket in The collectors paid $1 million to acquire the 10
hours of black-and-white tapes, says Thomas. Along with their director
of operations, John Messina (another rock veteran who used to perform
with the band Michaels Messina and operated TCB Studios on The footage is sometimes maddening (the avant-garde-inclined Cox sometimes shot upside down and sideways), but most of it is totally engaging if you're a Lennon fan. His dry wit is in rare form, whether he's joking about English bobbies "frowning at the traffic," London taxi drivers "trying to push pedestrians out of the way," putting LSD in Richard Nixon's "tea urn," or meeting a Beatles publicist who "George (Harrison) once got so mad at that he threw orange juice in his face." The footage was shot three months before the Beatles broke up and before Cox became a villain to the Lennons by taking off with Kyoko, the daughter he had with Yoko, who didn't see her for the next 15 years. The owners of the new tapes are now seeking a release from Ono, which they need to market the tape as a commercial documentary. Ono's lawyer, Peter Shukat, said yesterday that Ono hasn't seen the tapes, so she has no opinions yet. He also said there are copyright materials in the film (the songs) that require clearance from her. "I did hear from Ray Thomas and I've talked to his lawyer, but his lawyer said he'd get back to me, but he hasn't done so yet, I'm just waiting here peacefully," Shukat said. The Framingham-based Thomas, 49, an avid Beatles
collector who also purchased the Broadwood piano that Lennon used to
compose songs for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,"
hopes Ono will "come to the table because there's nothing ugly
about John and Yoko in these tapes," he said. "They represent
a part of history that people should see." His group plans to hold
a viewing party in a |
