Imagine: John Lennon

The 1988 documentary commissioned by Yoko Ono might have been the jumping-off point for the Lennon legacy project we know today. It shows John at his best, for the most part, and there's not much dissent from the talking heads, including May Pang, Julian Lennon and Cynthia Lennon. We ask why John chose George Harrison to play on How Do You Sleep?, his Paul McCartney diss track, when he could've got a session player. We discuss how John and Yoko's bed-in confrontation with the cartoonist Al Capp prefigures a lot of contemporary online discourse. And why wasn't Paul familiar with Real Love when Yoko gave him the demo cassettes, given he'd seen it used in this?

• You can rent the film to stream very cheaply on a few platforms: https://g.co/kgs/RvcGK68
• Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/kqg3plZzxZY
• Here's the audience member who asked John and Yoko a question on Dick Cavett, wrongly thought by some to be Curt Claudio: https://youtu.be/-Ej3h02KPLU?si=nRgu_iUn3-DSYg6n&t=71
• A documentary, What Happened to Claudio? has been on the verge of release for a while and we're looking forward to seeing it. Here's its YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaR2o3qwr2RBu7s95IxSMXw 
• John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky contains a longer version of the encounter with Claudio than you get in this film: https://youtu.be/99fXJ8nSR1M 
• An in-depth article by Ryan H Walsh about Curt Claudio which is well worth reading: https://medium.com/@JahHills/on-claudio-the-man-who-sought-out-john-lennon-to-ask-if-his-songs-were-about-him-c0b34c5d57ac
• The interview Julian Lennon gave to the Daily Telegraph in 1998: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4713954/Dad-was-a-hypocrite.-He-could-talk-about-peace-and-love-to-the-world-but-he-could-never-show-it-to-his-wife-and-son.html 
• Julian's 1984 song Too Late for Goodbyes: https://youtu.be/aQs1Ynq0rlk

Meet the Beatles Films Podcast

The Beatles Films Podcast is hosted by Matt Looker and Ed Williamson. We're both film writers and Beatles fans. Between us we've written for TheShiznit.co.uk, Total Film, Den of Geek and Virgin Media.

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