Fred Seaman "The Last Days of John Lennon"

That was my impression as well. The book made Lennon seem human.

 

Yoko's biggest lie is never coming clean about the affair she had with Sam Green in the summer of 1980. She won't deny it, she simply never talks about it. And since it was only months before John died it would make her even more unpopular with Lennon fans.

"I'm Losing you" refers to this event

 

I'm not a real Lennon-expert, but isn't "I'm losing you" originaly written during the "Lost weekend" period? I remember read it somewhere.

 

Many of the lyrics were written in Bermuda in 1980 although certain parts of the music date back much further

 

Just to make sure. Did she ever actually said that? Or was it just John putting some hipper-than-thou remarks in her mouth?

 

I don't think so. This quote from John:

It literally started when I tried to call from Bermuda and I couldn't get through. I was mad as hell and feeling lost in space and it's... just as much a description of the separation period in the early Seventies as that occasion when I physically couldn't get through on the phone.
John Lennon, 1980
Al We Are Saying, David Shef

 

I'm pretty sure she has said that. In fact... didn't she say that in the Imagine: John Lennon movie?

 

Thanks. I'll have to "spin" that one seriously one of these days...

 

Sorry, John was not upfront about his relationship with Yoko in 1980. He simply chose to not to discuss with the press his marital problems with Yoko in which they rarely saw each other from early April to late July in 1980.
Yoko kept him out of town while she carried on her affair with Sam Green back in NYC.

 

Just curious — do you have any source for this story besides Seaman?

 

It's in his public confession, as quoted in post #13. "I wrote things about you and your family in my book and various tabloids that were factually inaccurate and I now realize how much pain and embarrassment I have caused." Straightforward as it gets.

I love this idea that Yoko has an army of thugs, like she's some kind of Batman villain.

As for her attorneys making Seaman's life a living hell, consider: Seaman signed a confidentiality agreement in 1979 and started violating it immediately on John Lennon's death. He stole thousands of dollars' worth of memorabilia. Nonetheless, Yoko Ono did not sue him when his thefts were discovered in 1982. She did not sue him when he helped Albert Goldman with The Lives of John Lennon and did numerous interviews to promote Goldman's book. She did not even sue him when he published his own memoir in 1991. It was only when he started legal action against her in 1999, demanding royalties for photos in the Anthology box, that she finally sued.

She easily won a humiliating settlement from Seaman. And she could have done the same at any time in the past 17 years. But she didn't, until he left her with no other option.

Sorry to disappoint, but you won't find many "fullblown Yoko-ites" among the people criticising Seaman here. I have no problem with a warts-and-all portrayal of Yoko if it's grounded in some sort of reality. I think Peter Doggett's You Never Give Me Your Money gives a pretty fair picture of her, for instance.

But I'm amazed that anyone could credit Seaman's account of himself as Lennon's one true friend in a sea of exploiters. The whole book reeked of ego and self-pity. And there's a curious pattern to the little details that he gets provably wrong — so many of them put Yoko in a negative light.

What, you're claiming that story was true?

Here's Seaman's story, as it appeared in the Sunday Mirror.

So Seaman's story is carefully presented to fit his perpetual anti-Yoko narrative. The thing is, though, that gardenias are not funeral flowers in Japan. They're just not. You can Google it.

My first thought was that Seaman might have been misremembering, and the flowers were actually chrysanthemums or something. But no, Yoko confirms that they were gardenias:

So yes, it's an absurd thing for Seaman to make up. But there's no escaping the fact that he did.

 

I can't remember exactly what gets said in Imagine: John Lennon, but the usual source for this claim is Lennon's Rolling Stone interview:

"John Dunbar introduced us — neither of us knew who the hell each other was. She didn't know who I was; she'd only heard of Ringo; I think it means apple in Japanese."

So even if you assume John's not indulging in any hyperbole there, she wasn't claiming she hadn't heard of the Beatles.

What I've seen Yoko herself say in interviews is that she didn't recognise John when he walked into the gallery. I have no trouble believing that. I also have no trouble believing that she had only the vaguest awareness of the Beatles during the early days of their fame. When she moved to London and started her association with the Indica — co-owned by Peter Asher — she couldn't have escaped hearing more about them then, and indeed Barry Miles says she met with Paul at one point when she was organising a tribute to John Cage.

 

He wrote the song and yet never mentions in interviews that the song was about the affair. So, who did he tell that the song was about the affair?

 

John never spoke about this and we might never know exactly what he knew.
Sam Green who John Lennon mentions in his Will would be left as guardian to Sean should anything happen to both of them, had this to say about Yoko and how he was portrayed in Goldman's book. The information regarding him he claims is "true"
Yoko has never denied their relationship and is probably one the reasons she has never written an autobiography.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRNVOQkC9xo

 

Here's an interesting comparison between John and another contemporary, both around the age of 40. Does Jagger look gaunt as well? To me, they both look like they're pretty close in build, and no one I know would say that Jagger looks sick. Skinny, yes, gaunt, nah.

 

Jagger is very thin but he worked out, so he has muscle tone. John probably didn't work out that much. That's the major difference between them

 

Without getting into whether Sam Green is credible or not, he does not say in your YouTube video that all the information about him in Goldman's bio is true, or even that he's read the book. He just says, "I thought he was a very good researcher, and the truth would come out."

 

It's obvious he doesn't want to talk about it, so I'm not sure what type of confession you want? He never said anything wasn't true in the book and to say he hasn't read the book with all the concerned he has shown about how he would be portrayed is a little riduculous.

Seaman has also confirmed this even though you don't believe anything he says.

Matthew any chance your Yoko's cousin or something?

 

So why do you state that the song is about the affair as fact?

 

I'd say it's more likely you are Fred Seaman.

 

Nothing is 100% but if you know when the lyrics were written and some of the details of their relationship at that time in the summer of 1980 it all ties together including information provided from insiders like Seaman.

 

Fair comment.

I do admit, I'm not definite about how I feel on this. It could be that maybe some of the photos are just bad ones of John.

The ones I posted on the first page though, some of those he doesn't look well to me, certainly older then 40. Especially these ones from the Peeble interview:

 

Oh, I expect he probably has read it, or at least the parts of it that concern him. But it's still very important to distinguish between what Sam Green says himself and what Goldman and others say that he says. Some of the stories attributed to Sam Green in The Lives of John Lennon are incorrect, but this is not necessarily his fault; we know that for other interviewees there were large discrepancies between what they said on Goldman's interview tapes and the distorted versions that appeared in his book. It's dangerous to say that Sam Green has corroborated a story unless we have a direct citation from Green himself.

 

Put me in the minority on this: I always thought John looked fantastic in 1980.